Dan Snow's History Hit - Mount Hiei: Home of Japan's Warrior Monks

Episode Date: May 20, 2025

Assassin's Creed: Shadows gives players the chance to visit the imperial capital of medieval Japan. But today, we're heading to a mountain lying just northeast of the capital: Mount Hiei, a sacred site that was protected by a powerful army of warrior monks.Dr Chris Harding, Senior Lecturer in Asian History from the University of Edinburgh, returns to help Matt Lewis understand what life was like on Mount Hiei during the late Sengoku period; its role in the story of Japanese unification; and what all this can tell us about Japanese religious beliefs at the time.Echoes of History is a Ubisoft podcast, brought to you by History Hit. Listen here.Hosted by: Matt LewisEdited by: Tim ArstallProduced by: Matt Lewis, Robin McConnellSenior Producer: Anne-Marie LuffProduction Manager: Beth DonaldsonExecutive Producers: Etienne Bouvier, Julien Fabre, Steve Lanham, Jen BennettMusic by The FlightSign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.We'd love to hear your feedback - you can take part in our podcast survey here: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on.You can also email the podcast directly at [e-mail].

Hey folks, welcome to Dan Snow's History It. We're going to run an episode today from our sister podcast, Echoes of History. It's our collaboration with Ubisoft, and it delves into the real places, people, and events behind the Assassin's Creed games. It's well worth checking out. It's very good fun. This episode is about Mount Hi'ai, the mystical mountain home of an army of warrior monks. Enjoy.

in home of an army of warrior monks. Enjoy. Welcome to Echoes of History, the place to explore the rich stories of the past that bring the world of Assassin's Creed to life. I'm Matt Lewis. Over the past few episodes, we've returned to the heart of Sengoku-era Japan, the tumultuous setting for the eagerly awaited Assassin's Creed Shadows. With the release of the game just weeks away, we'llultuous setting for the eagerly awaited Assassin's Creed Shadows. With the release of the game just weeks away, we'll be delving into the period's intricate landscapes of power and ambition, preparing you, as a player, to experience it all for yourself in Assassin's Creed Shadows. Later this week, I'll continue my special series of episodes that take a close look at samurai and shinobi, the weapons they wielded, the battle tactics they used, their politics and culture. No stone will

remain unturned as we discover just what separated and united the two iconic warrior classes of Japan. But today we're headed to a mountain lying just northeast of Japan's imperial capital of Kyoto, Mount Hiei. We'll be reuniting with some familiar characters, notably the fearsome Oda Nobunaga. But before we do that, let's climb the mountainside path as it winds through the dense forest past shrines and temples to the top of this sacred mountain. past shrines and temples to the top of this sacred mountain. Returning to the podcast is Dr Chris Harding, Senior Lecturer in Asian History from the University of Edinburgh, who will help us understand what life was like on Mount Hiei during the late Sengoku period,

its role in the story of Japanese unification and what all of this can tell us about Japanese religious beliefs at the time. Welcome back to Echoes of History, Chris. It's fantastic to have you back with us. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure. It was such good fun the other two times you came on. We had to find another reason to drag you back to talk to us again. Brilliant. And we thought this time we would talk about a place, and it's a place that I've not heard of before, so I'm really interested to find out more about this.

And I wonder if I could check with you before we start how I pronounce the name of this mountain that we're going to talk about. Yes, so this is Mount Hiei. Hiei. Right, lovely. Mount Hiei. And Mount Hiei is going to be a place in Assassin's Creed Shadows that players can visit and walk around and tour the settlements of. So whereabouts in Japan is Mount Hiei and what would people expect to see if they visited it during this period? Mount Hiei lies just outside Kyoto. It's just to the northeast of Kyoto and it's this lovely location, Kyoto to one side and this beautiful lake, Lake Biwa, to the other. And I think one of the reasons it becomes so well known is that around 795, Japan's capital, the imperial capital,

moved to what we now know as Kyoto. They called it Heiankyo, City of Peace and Tranquility, at the time, which is rather lovely. And because Mount Hiei was to the northeast of the city, this was a direction in which according to various ideas from Chinese geomancy was an unlucky direction this was a direction from which all sorts of evil spirits might make their way into the city Mount Hiei becomes associated with protecting Kyoto and protecting the emperor and protecting all these aristocrats who were building

lovely homes there and so Mount Hiei is important for that reason but also if you went there by the time we're in the period that we're thinking about so what the the 14th 15th centuries it was also home to an enormous buddhist complex so you'd have monasteries lecture halls meditation halls also ordinary people little communities living around the mountain, serving all the monks who lived on the mountain. So we're not talking about an isolated place where people might go for whatever reason. This is an inhabited mountain that serves a political and a religious function and is covered in people.

Yes, that's right. You can find sort of remote parts of it. So you'll find some of the aristocrats living down in Kyoto might go on a pilgrimage or on a retreat to the mountains. So it does have its wild remote parts. But also there are literally thousands of Buddhist buildings dotted all around the mountain. And at the absolute summit,

the most important building is the Enryaku-ji Temple Complex, which is sort of the beating heart of the particular Buddhist sect in charge of the mountain. And they're called the Tendai sect. And what do we know about the emergence of the mountain as an important place and of the Tendai sect? Are there any sort of milestones that we can point to in the emergence of the Buddhist presence there? Yeah, I think probably an important name is Saicho, who's a Japanese monk, Japanese Buddhist monk, who travelled to China in the early 9th century. A lot of Japan's Buddhist ideas would come in waves through

China and Korea. He went to China, he learned some new teachings in China called the Tiantai teachings, from which Tendai comes and he basically brought those back to Japan, set himself up on Mount Hiei and managed bit by bit to persuade the rulers of Kyoto, the imperial family, these big aristocratic families, that what he was offering was as it were the latest update and not just the latest update but the way he talked about Tendai was it included all the other Buddhist teachings. So although Buddhism was divided into various sects, if you were a Tendai Buddhist you had everything included under that umbrella. So he was quite a strong advocate for it as a

religion but also as a force in Japan's national life generally and it's really Saicho that helps to get Tendai going and Mount Hiei going. So Tendai kind of positions itself as a catch-all form of Buddhism, so you can get the best bits of all of the Buddhist cults, all the Buddhist sects out there and bring them all together in Tendai, so you don't ever need another form of Buddhism, really. I think that's his plan. It's also part of a trend in buddhism towards offering something to everybody so saicho talked about

buddhahood for all whereas in an earlier generation or many many generations before in japan it might have been primarily monastics monks and nuns who were working every day day in and day out for their salvation for saicho what he's offering in Tendai is the idea that everybody has the Buddha nature and if you perform the right rituals, if you have faith, if you learn, if you meditate, you can realize that Buddha nature and it really is for everybody. And he's particularly interested in this idea within Buddhism which is the Bodhisattva, which is someone who has developed themselves to the point of enlightenment, but decides to hang back and work for the enlightenment of everybody else

before they, as it were, cross over into Nirvana themselves. So he's really throwing the doors of Buddhism wide open to everybody, which I think really helps to build up Tendai as he does. And how then does Tendai sort of sit with something like Shinto, you know, a traditional religion of Japan? Do we see tension between the two of those or do they find a way to bring Shinto into Tendai as well? Good question. There was considerable tension when Buddhism first came into Japan, maybe around the 6th and 7th centuries. People tried to bring in statues and sutras from Korea and then when there was famine or a plague, someone, often someone who was deeply invested in Shinto, would say

that's because the Japanese gods, the native gods, are angry at these basic migrant deities who should be kicked out of the country. And so they might throw the statue in the river to see if it improved things. But over time Buddhism gets a foothold and the attitude that the Japanese take, especially the imperial family and the aristocrats in Kyoto, is that when it comes to cosmic protection, there's no such thing as having too much. So if you've got the native gods looking out for you, if you've also got people on Hiei praying to various Buddhist deities for you, then you are doubly protected. So I think that's how they begin to see Buddhism. The only difficulty, I think, in practice, this gets us on later on to when Hiei finds itself

in trouble, is there's only so much money and political influence to go around. So in practice, different Buddhist sects and Buddhist sects versus Shintar sects do find themselves scrapping for political favour and for cold hard cash but at least in theory the two can work together. I quite like the idea of spiritual double glazing. It's a good way of putting it yeah absolutely. If one layer's not enough we'll just get another layer of protection over us as well. Presumably the connection of Hiei as as the location in which Tendai develops and its connection to Kyoto and the imperial family means that there is significant prestige already associated with here which helps Hendai to grow yes I think absolutely so in the period where Tendai grows and Hiei develops we're talking really about the 9th and 10th centuries in Japan some of your

listeners might know it from the tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu some people call it you know the world's first novel or the world's first psychological novel perhaps published around the year 1000 and at this point you've got the imperial family in Kyoto but real power is starting to pass to these great aristocratic clans, notably the Fujiwara. They do things like marrying their daughters to imperial princes so they can have a Fujiwara. A bit of Fujiwara blood added to the imperial line. And Fujiwara, the Fujiwara clan is very good at trying to do business with Tende on Mount Hiei so after a while some of the most important priests and leaders on Hiei are from the Fujiwara clan so they really fit together I think quite neatly also if people read something like the tale of Genji they might be struck by

the extent to which Japanese people really were every day bothered by various supernatural forces, fear of what happens after death. If you have for example the birth of an important person, an imperial or an aristocratic child in Kyoto, you will hire shamans for the occasion, you will have Buddhist monks chanting, all sorts of other rituals being done and what Tendai is really good at is ceremonial. They can say whatever the problem is, birth of a child, pregnancy, can't get pregnant, worried about death, whatever it might be, we have something for you.

And I think by supplying that to the elite, they become, I would say, almost the sort of, a kind of Japan's answer to the Church of England. You know, the country's elite at prayer is really what Tendai becomes, I think, in its heyday. And would it have appealed and been as important to ordinary Japanese people too? Was this something that was the preserve of the elite, or was this something that everybody could engage with?

It's an interesting one. In theory, it was for everybody. So you've got Tendai temples around the country. At various stages of every person's life. There will be rituals, particularly funeral rituals and memorial rituals, which Tendai would be heavily involved in. But funnily enough, what happens in the late 12th century, 13th century, the advantage of Tendai is kind of turned on its head. So its advantage is that it encompasses all these different Buddhist traditions within it. So you got zen style meditation you've got all these other elements including the worship of a Buddha called Amida Buddha the Buddha of infinite light and

compassion so it includes everything as you say you get tendai you get everything you possibly need but the flip side is that when some monks on Mount Hiei find that life's a bit tough, all the ceremonies they have to do, one of them for example involves for 90 days non-stop walking around a statue of Amida Buddha reciting Amida Buddha's name. And for some people this just becomes too much and a handful of monks one after the other leave here, start to preach their own version of Buddhism and start to attract quite large followings around them. So to offer you another European parallel, people talk about it as a kind of reformation in Buddhism, becomes a populist reformation. So some of these people,

a leader like Shinran in the 13th century, he tells his followers, you don't need ritual, you don't need to pay priests for things, you don't need to read loads of sutras, you don't need to do lots of, you know, back-breaking meditation. All you need to do, literally, is call on the name of Amida Buddha, a very short prayer, call on his name. And when you die, he will come and rescue you and take you away to the Pure Land. You get these lovely paintings called Raigo which show someone at the bottom on their deathbed and Amida coming down with his bodhisattvas riding on clouds to take them away. So these populist forms of Buddhism start to eat Tendai's lunch I think. So a lot of ordinary Japanese are drawn to these you could say easier more straightforward sects, which appeal to their

level of education and also to the spare time they have. You know, if you're an aristocrat, you've got a bit of time, you can go for a two or three day retreat. If you're, you know, if you're working in the fields, you can't realistically take time off from that. So these easier forms of Buddhism really start to take over in Japan. It's amazing how often some of those things that are meant for everybody aren't in practice actually for everybody. Yes, very much so. And when we get to the period in which Assassin's Creed Shadows is set, so in the later 16th century, we're talking about the time of Oda Nobunaga and the beginning of the unification of Japan. Given Mount Hiei's importance

in Japanese religion, does it also have a political role to play in that period of turbulence? Yes, it has that religious influence in Japan. It has that psychological hold on the ruling elite, you know, to whose various needs and anxieties it's managed to tend quite effectively. It also has what are called Sōshi, warrior monks. So these army of trained monks who now and again will descend the mountain, intimidate rivals in Kyoto. Occasionally they'll actually burn down the temples of rival Buddhist sects. So they can still project their power in these various different ways. Nevertheless, at the same time, some of these newer sects that came about in this period of reformation have also become

very powerful. I think the one worth briefly mentioning when we're talking about Nobunaga is Shinran's sect called the true pure land sect of Buddhism, Jodo Shinshu. This is the sect where if you but call on the name of Amida Buddha you know you will be saved. That very simple pure kind of faith which it emphasizes and And it is incredibly well-armed. So it has a fortified complex at what is now Osaka in Japan with these fortified outposts, very hard to get at. It also has quite wealthy and well-equipped followers across Japan to whom the leader from Osaka can send out a message saying,

rise up and people will equip themselves, feed themselves, and go off and fight whoever they're told to fight. So religious sects like these, Tendai and Joro Shinshu, are really dangerous for someone like Oda Nobunaga. You know, he's got enough to worry about with these secular warlords who he's trying to fight, but what he finds is as his power grows in the what the the final third of the 16th century both Tendai and Jodo Shinshu their leaders come out against him and denounce him what that means for Jodo Shinshu is people are told around the country to take up

arms against Oda Nobunaga and that if they don't they won't be considered members of the sect anymore. And there's a certain amount of evidence that the kind of faith involved in Jodo Shinshu Buddhism can be really effective on the battlefield. People sometimes carry into battle pieces of paper with this short prayer written on them and it would give them this extra kind of boost, this extra kind of strength. And so Oda Nobunaga comes to detest these independent Buddhist sects who wield all this money and all this armed support. And that's why he turns his gaze on Hiei.

I was going to ask about warrior monks, but I wonder whether that was going to be a real thing or is that a myth? We think about Buddhist monks having this warrior element to what they do and I guess while you were talking then I was thinking about European parallels again and I'm thinking they sound something like maybe the Templars a few centuries earlier in that they are a political powerhouse but they're also a financial one and a religious one and a military one too.

They kind of bring all of that together to mean that you've got this really significant thing perched on this mountain that really nobody can ignore. Yes, I think that's a really good parallel. You can imagine the psychological impact of having an imposing mountain on which you know is living hundreds and hundreds of well-trained warrior monks. Also within Buddhism, you know,

it used to be thought years ago that Buddhism is a quintessentially peaceful religion and that it demands it, you know, it's very cool. And that's why I was wondering about the warrior monk thing, because, you know, you think of peaceful religions and you also think of warrior monks and you think, how do you reconcile those two? But I mean, religions have always been quite good at reconciling violence with the idea that you shouldn't be violent. I think so. There was a lot of work done on this after the Second World War because Buddhist organisations in Japan had given a lot of support to the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II, including holding meditation retreats for them.

One of the things they used to use to justify this was there are stories of past lives of the Buddha where he would kill someone to avoid them accumulating bad karma. If they lived much longer, their karma would get worse, their subsequent rebirth would be worse. And so, as it were, the best thing for them is to take them out early on. So all sorts of ways in which you could justify this if you wanted to. And what's striking about Oda Nobunaga is he's quite friendly to European Christians in this period. You know, we know the Portuguese are in Japan by this point, partly because both Oda Nobunaga and the Portuguese, particularly the Christian missionaries, detest Buddhism. They have them up there as one of their

principal enemies. Interesting. So yeah, the enemy of my enemy becomes my friend. research from the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings, Normans, Kings and Popes, who were rarely the best of friends, murder, rebellions and crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. everything that i've learned about odin abunaga throughout doing these podcasts has taught me that he's not someone you want to be on the wrong side of so i'm feeling like tendai might have made a mistake by getting on the wrong side of odin abunaga how does he go about tackling this force who are who are encouraging people to fight against him so I think absolutely right he isn't someone he's not only someone you don't want to get on the wrong side of he's also someone who doesn't seem to have strong what we would think of as being strong religious convictions so he didn't believe there was anything after death what he

believed in was power and security in this life there's even a story that when he was about 17 his father died. He had the Buddhist monks who had prayed for his father locked into a temple, locked inside a temple. Then he surrounded the temple with soldiers holding muskets and shot them to death for having failed basically to keep his father alive. So that's the kind of person that they are up against. I think there was a hope. This is the early 1570s so Oda Nobunaga is doing well but he's not yet this invincible force in Japanese politics and I think Tendai hoped that they would manage to be part of a coalition that would do away with him because he was you know he's such a menace but he obviously takes it rather badly having Tendai come out against him and so he sends roughly 30,000 men to encircle

the base of Mount Hiei, these are men who've been through awfully bloody battles already, properly battle hardened and as soon as they appear around the base of Mount Hiei some of the people, just ordinary men women and children, who live towards the base of Mount Hiei some of the people just ordinary men women and children who live towards the base of the mountain think well we can't get out can't get out by going downwards so we have to go upwards and they make their way up the mountain because as we said earlier on the most important building or the most important complex on Mount Hiei is Enryakuji the original temple that Saicho built back in the 9th century. So they make their way up there. They try and buy Nobunaga's men off. They offer him lots of cash basically but Nobunaga has as much cash as he really needs. He's not bothered by that. And he sends, this is September 1571, he sends his men

up the mountain and from what we know they murder people completely indiscriminately. So we have quite vivid records from this period of these men making their way up the mountain. People are sort of fleeing in front of them and they are shooting them dead. They're hacking them to death. You have arquebus wielding snipers in holes, taking people out as they come past. Some people are begging for the lives of their wives and children but Nobunaga orders them basically all to be executed and there's an amazing picture in words that gets drawn from us by the end. So you've got we think somewhere in the region of 3,000 Buddhist buildings on this mountain. They're looted and then they're burned to the

ground. So Mount Hiei becomes this basic sort of whirlwind of fire. These are all, of course, wooden buildings, which very often in Japan have burned down when people go to war. But it's completely engulfed in flames. And then afterwards, someone remembers Mount Hiei as this place that was associated with wealth, erudition, political influence, great art as well, of course, within these temples. And now it's said to be a barren landscape, carpeted in ash, across which only badgers and foxes can now move. So just this picture of utter devastation when Oda Nobunaga has done his business. He's a pretty terrifying bloke, isn't he? devastation when Oda Nobunaga's done his business. He's a pretty terrifying bloke, isn't he?

He is, and he's equally awful with the true Pure Land sect in Osaka when he lays siege to their fortress, not terribly far away from Kyoto, actually. The only good thing in the case of the siege of this other sect in Osaka is that the patriarch of that, this is in the early 1580s, about 10 years later, the patriarch surrenders to Oda in the early 1580s, so about 10 years later, the patriarch surrenders to Oda Nobunaga because how merciless he is and he leaves the temple to go and surrender in person. But his son, just before he leaves and all his men leave with him, sets fire to the entire temple compound in Osaka. So Nobunaga, Oda Nobunaga, had hoped to be able to stroll in and survey his great prize but instead this person burns it to the ground so you know if his sect can't have it nobunaga can't have

it either it's a very very small victory given the scale of what order nobunaga has done but i think very effectively he wipes out the power of the political power of budd Japan. And it never really recovers the level of power that it had back in the heyday of Mount Hiei. Yeah, yeah. I was going to ask how significant Oda Nobunaga's victory there was in the grand scheme of the unification of Japan. Is it a major moment that he breaks this power of Buddhism

or, you know, is that a playing hindsight to see it as something bigger than it probably was at the time? No, I think at the time it was recognised how big it was. And what's interesting is Oda Nobunaga's successor, Koyotomi Hideyoshi, has a similar problem with Christians in Japan. So as it were, Oda Nobunaga's taking care of the Buddhists. Hideyoshi finds that Christians have influence not because they're armed in the way the Buddh it were, Oda Nobunaga's taking care of the Buddhists. Hideyoshi finds that Christians have influence, not because they're armed in the way the Buddhists were, but because they have links with Portuguese traders and with the wider European world in general.

And so Hideyoshi has to deal with the Christians in a similar way. Of course, after Hideyoshi comes Tokugawa Ieyasu, who creates the Tokugawa Shogunate. And he's very successful at keeping Japanese Buddhism under his boot basically. Some of the larger sects he divides into two. He uses some of the Buddhist temples as a way of registering the local population. You have to go and register your name at the temple. If they suspect you of being a Christian you've got to go to the Buddhist temple and stand on an image of Jesus

on the cross, or perhaps the Virgin Mary, to prove that you've renounced your Christianity. So you see the state making use of Buddhism as opposed to being pushed around by it. Yeah, it's an interesting reversal of fortunes, I guess, isn't it? From Mount Hades, sort of having all of this influence over Kyoto and the elite there, to now being just a tool of the state afterwards. I think that's right. The other thing I might sort of add on that is once you get into the 1600s, the real ideological basis of the way Japan is ruled and the values that people are expected to accept

comes much more from Confucianism. is ruled and the values that people are expected to accept comes much more from Confucianism. So Buddhism and Shinto are still part of the mix, but the kind of moral core of Japan is Confucianism. And it doesn't have that dangerous institutional presence in Japan that Buddhism had once had. So in yet another sense, I suppose Buddhism has been tamed. Yeah. And I don't know whether this is possible with the nature of Japanese buildings of this period, but does any sort of archaeology survive from this destruction of Mount Hiei to give us an idea of how true it is? You know, there are accounts of it being destroyed and burned and, as you said, thousands of people potentially being killed. Is there any evidence that survives to back that up? I think most of the evidence is in terms of accounts of the time.

So it's quite well evidenced. The problem with these Japanese buildings is, obviously in this case, they were deliberately put to the torch. But in fact, in the middle of the 10th century, a lot of it had been rebuilt anyway because it burned down. So periodically, these buildings have to be renewed. But a lot of them do get rebuilt. And so Mount Hiei now is still a tourist attraction you can get there up a cable car from Kyoto you get a lovely view over Kyoto also lovely view over Lake Biwa for anybody who's

in Kyoto during the hot the very hot and muggy summer months a trip up Mount Hiei is well worth a look. Yeah. Does Mount Hiei ever see a revival after this? Do Buddhists return to the mountain? Does it regain any of its previous significance or is it permanently broken? No, it does survive. Tendai does survive. It never gets back to the level of influence I think it had almost unchallenged. There were other Buddhist sects, but Tendai was so far out at the front in terms of size and wealth and political influence in 10th, 11th centuries that it really was, as I sort of suggested, you know, the kind of national church of Japan. In the centuries afterwards it's really these other sects which are much larger so Jodo Shinshu, True Pure Land sect of course Zen sects become really big in Japan so it takes its place

amongst other Japanese Buddhist sects one of its most famous representatives a nun called Setsuichi Jakucho she passed away I think a few years ago but I interviewed her early in her 90s and she was defending Tendai because I was saying what do you think about sex like Jodo Shinshu where all you have to do is have faith and declare your faith in Amida and she said no no no that's easy Buddhism if you want the real thing you know you've got to work for it and she was this great celebrity presence in Japan a kind of agony aunt actually, big presence on TV, advice columns, she wrote lots of books, she was even a novelist actually in an earlier life. So I think she helped to put Tendai on the map and now there are plenty of Japanese who like to go on meditation retreats,

you know, getting away from everyday rat race for a bit. So I think it's succeeding on that basis. And its location still, as ever, is formidable. So it's always going to be attracting people. But I would be surprised if it ever goes back to the kind of influence it once had. Yeah, and presumably it loses a degree of its importance to when the capital moves from Kyoto to Edo, you know, because it's no longer in that position, protecting the imperial capital, with that proximity to the

imperial capital and all of those connections that that allowed it to thrive. Presumably, when the capital moves from Kyoto, a lot of that is gone, too. I think that's right. Yeah, that's a good point so the capital moves and also power has shifted to the tokugawa clan which historically doesn't have as much to do with um tendai as the fujiwara clan did which we were talking about a little bit early on a little bit earlier on i think it retains something in that although the capital moves to edo and in later centuries edo's both the political capital becomes a great you know production industrial capital as well Kyoto remains the cultural capital of Japan I think Kyotoites would probably if you ask them tell you Kyoto's the real capital

so it maintains a connection with what is still considered to be this really important area of Japan but certainly yeah the movers and shakers of Japan politically after the war, I suppose as well, the Second World War this is, it's probably Tokyo, maybe Osaka as a big second city where a lot of the jobs are, the media is. So Kyoto maybe becomes thought of as being traditional, yes, but maybe slightly quaint and perhaps not at the real cutting edge of things anymore.

So, yeah, I think I'd agree Mount Hiei probably suffers to some extent with that association. be slightly quaint and perhaps not at the real cutting edge of things anymore so yeah i think i'd agree mount here probably suffers to some extent with that association what i'm taking away from this is a religious element to this this whole sengoku period and this unification of japan that i hadn't picked up on before, that this is often about Buddhist sects versus different Buddhist sects versus Christianity and the influence that's coming over with that versus other religious influences and also someone like Nobunaga who's probably a bit of an atheist or agnostic but willing to use these religions where they work for him and destroy them where they don't is it fair to think that religion is a fairly significant part of what goes on in Japan

in this period I think it is certainly in the time of Oda Nobunaga the fact that he was worried enough about Tendai to send 30,000 monks up there and finish them off I think tells you something there's a bit of an irony to it because the founder of Tendai, Saicho, was one of Japan's earliest, I suppose you could say, proto-nationalists. So he talked about Dainippon Teikoku, you know, the great Japan or the great Japanese empire, and he wanted people to consider Tendai as part of the buttress for Japan, you know, as a political force in the world. So the fact that his sect ended up, as it were, on the wrong end of this war in the Sengoku period, I think he'd have regarded it as an irony. He might even, perhaps, who knows, have sensed something about Oda Nobunaga and would have said either let's throw in our lot with him or, as a

lot of inglorious participants tend to do in these wars is hang back and see who looks like getting the upper hand and then throw in your lot with them um perhaps that's what it'd have done but very sadly for Tendai and Hie um the decision was made to go against Nobunaga and they really paid the price yeah yeah I mean that's fascinating because you you can see a world in which Tendai and Nobunaga could have complemented each other so if Saicho and Nobunaga could have complemented each other so if Saicho and Nobunaga had sat down it sounds like they might have had a lot in common and a lot of similar ideas and could have worked together whereas you say instead you end up in a situation

where Tendai is is very much the opponent of Nobunaga yeah it's it's a real shame I think Saicho his idea I think I said, Dai Nippon Teikoku, great Japan, wasn't the sense of an empire just yet. Great Japan, it means he had a really strong sense of both Japan's history and its purpose in the world. This is Saicho. So he talked about Prince Shotoku, this legendary, semi-legendary figure from the Japanese past, sometimes credited with coming up with the name of Nihon, the land of the rising sun or root of the sun for Japan. He talked about that Prince Shotoku as being his own spiritual grandfather. So I think he had a really astute sense of how religion and politics would go together,

linked, as you said, with this kind of spiritual double glazing. I think Oda Nobunaga would not have wanted to share power with anybody. And I think you get a sense of that by the way that he treats the shogun in Kyoto. When he finally reaches Kyoto, tries to work with the shogun for a while, builds him a nice castle, which is supposed to double as a kind of cage for him. But the minute the shogun appears to want to develop his own policies and make his own alliances um nobunaga has him shut down basically destroys him senders sends him off and i think the shogun ends him ends his life as a kind of wandering beggar so there's no sense in which nobunaga would have shared power and i suspect he would have thought

that tendai would be difficult people to deal with because there would always be a sense of a parallel order going on there. And I don't think he could tolerate that. Yeah, yeah. Maybe I'm wrong there. Maybe he would have always found an excuse to fall out with Tendai eventually. Potentially, yeah. Unless Saicho was extremely clever and realised what kind of a person Oda Nobunaga was

and would have to be making his obeisances. That could have worked. It would be a bit humiliating for him, but it might have worked. And just to end on, I'm asking everybody that I speak to about this. Assassin's Creed puts players back into this world. You can walk through Japan during this period, during its reunification, and witness some of the events and visit some of these key places if i could put you into an animus machine and i could send you back to feudal japan in this period when and where would you like to go what would you like to see

that's an interesting one i think i would like to be sat next to Oda Nobunaga with his men on the day when they'd just vanquished one of their great enemies and they had had sake cups made from their skulls, from the tops of their skulls. They lacquered them, I think in silver or gold, perhaps both. They drank out of those cups and told stories and sang songs. I think in silver or gold, perhaps both, they drank out of those cups and told stories and sang songs. I think I would have wanted to be there and sit in the aura of a man like Oda Nobunaga. Not that I admire him or perhaps respect his attitude to the taking of human life, but he must have had something about him. And I think to be there with him and soak it up and find out what it was would be really something. Yeah, that's terrifying.

Again, he's an increasingly terrifying man. The more I learn about him, the more terrified I am of him. Even though he can't get me, he can't get me, he can't get me. But yeah, and I mean, talking to you about Mount Hiei has just made me think you know there must have been an incredible place to visit the mountain itself when it's at its height when it's this bustling centre of politics and religion lots of money flowing up and down the mountain and a military force too it must have been an incredible sight and an incredible feeling to be on that mountain when it was at its peak i bet absolutely and to have all the sort of the great and good of kyoto coming up the mountain

for a chance to sit at the feet of these monks and and learn something there's as you say there's just a sense of the sheer clout that you have at your peak with these people that must have been quite something and also these beautiful cavernous temples with the artwork the gilded statues of the buddha the incense wafting around the chanting of the monks i think that i've been yeah that would have maybe that'd be number two on my list after the uh sake drinking from skulls in terms of what i might think you'd want to unwind after the sake drinking from school's experience. You might need a little bit of a mountain retreat to get over that. Perfect. The combination sounds fabulous. Yeah.

Well, thank you so much for joining us again, Chris. It's been an absolute pleasure. It's been fascinating to find out more about Hiei and the influence of Tendai and the power that that mountain had for a brief while. And also how Oda Nobunaga broke and crushed that power too. So thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me. I hope you've enjoyed this episode of Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hit. In the next episode, I'll continue my special series

by examining the politics of samurai and shinobi with Professor Eric Rath. Then, next week, we're returning to the history of the Sengoku era as we relive the epic events of the Battle of Nagashino, when traditional medieval Japanese warfare clashed with modern firearms. Don't forget to subscribe and follow Echoes of History wherever you get your podcasts. And if you get your podcasts, and if you're enjoying it, you can leave us a review too. I'll see you next time among the Echoes of History. you