Japan: How to Show Who's Boss

More from Kyoto, I hope. Today we're talkin' about the Momoyama period (1586-1615)--a time of secular centralization, at the expense of some traditional (often Buddhist) powers. What do you do when you want to show who's bosee? Why, you build a building:

[Nobunaga] decided to build [a] castle completely of stone--something, as I have said, quite unknown in Japan. As there was no stone available for the work, he ordered many stone idols to be pulled down, and the men tied ropes around the necks of these and dragged them to the site. All this struck terror and amazement int he hearts of the Miako [Kyoto] citizens for they deeply venerated their idols. . . . He constructed a moat around the outside, spanned it with drawbridges, and placed different kinds of birds and fowls in the water. . . . He decreed that while the work was in progress none of the monastaries either inside or outside the city should toll its bells. He set up a bell in the castle to summon and dismiss the men, and as soon as it wa rung all the chief nobles and their retainers would begin working with spades and hoes in their hands. He always strode around girded about with a tiger skin on which to sit and wearing rough and coarse clothing; following his example everyone wore skins and no one dared to appear before him in court dress while the building was still in progress. Everybody, both men and women, who waned to go and view the work passed in front of him; while on the site one day, he happened to see a soldier lifting up a woman's cloak slightly in order to get a glimpse of her face, and there and then the king struck off his head with his own hand.

The most marvelous thing about the whole operation was the incredible speed with which the work was carried out.

--A Contemporary European report, quoted by
RHP Mason and JG Caiger, A History of Japan 185 (Rev. ed. 1997)