Samurai Battles: The Long Road to Unification

William De Lange

Toyo Press, Mar 20, 2020 - Biography & Autobiography - 170 pages

Known from his collaboration on the Netflix documentary Age of Samurai, historian William de Lange returns to what he does best: highly anecdotal stories from one of the most exciting episodes in Japanese history: the Warring States period.

De Lange takes the reader right back to the 16th century's closing decades. In the course of the ensuing journey we witness the major battles fought by the country's three great unifiers: Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and Tokugawa Ieyasu.

Quoting directly and at length from a wide range of contemporary sources, De Lange paints events and figures like no other, 'so richly rendered, ' according to one critic, 'that you'd swear De Lange was present at the time, taking notes.'

Samurai Battles is an epic account of a dramatic period in Japanese history--a period in which the whole country was consumed by the fire of civil strife that raged hardest on the field of battle.

About the author

William de Lange was born in 1964 in Naarden, the Netherlands to Dutch and English parents. In the late 1980s, he traveled to Japan, where he supported himself by making traditional Japanese scrolls, working as a carpenter, and writing articles for the Japan Times Weekly. Having studied at Leiden and Waseda universities during the nineties, he lived in Japan for the next decade, studying the art of Japanese fencing under Akita Moriji sensei, eighth dan master of the Shinkage-Ryu. Since then, he has written a large number of books on Japanese history, culture, and art. More recently, he has appeared in the Netflix documentary Age of Samurai. His many books include Samurai Battles, Samurai Sieges, An Encyclopedia of Japanese Castles, and The Siege of Osaka Castle. He is perhaps best known for his epic history of the Yagyu clan, and his acclaimed biography of Miyamoto Musashi.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Samurai Battles: The Long Road to Unification
• Author: William De Lange
• Publisher: Toyo Press, 2020
• ISBN: 9492722232, 9789492722232
• Length: 170 pages
• Subjects: Biography & Autobiography / Historical