After the Onin War, which had destroyed the power of the Ashikaga shogunate and the aristocratic Zen culture of Kyoto, Japan had become a collection of feudal fiefdoms. The emperor and Ashikaga shoguns in Kyoto were titular rulers of a land they in no way governed. Into this regional balance of power came Nobunaga, who began his military career by killing his brother in a family dispute and taking control of his home province. Shortly thereafter he defeated a powerful regional warlord who had invaded the province with an army far outnumbering his own. The victory made him a national figure overnight and destroyed the balance of dynamic tension that had preserved the system of autonomous _daimyo_ fiefs. Rival _daimyo_, covetous of their neighbors' lands, rushed to enlist his aid until, in 1568, he marched into Kyoto and installed a shogun of his own choosing. When the Buddhists on Mt. Hiei objected to Nobunaga's practices of land confiscation, he marched up the hill and sacked the premises, burning the buildings to the ground and killing every last man, woman, and child. This style of ecumenicity had been practiced often enough among the Buddhists themselves as one sect warred against the other, but never before had a secular ruler dared such a feat. This act and the program of systematic persecution that followed marked the end of genuine Buddhist influence in Japan. Nobunaga's armies of musket-wielding foot soldiers were on the verge of consolidating his authority over all Japan when he was unexpectedly murdered by one of his generals. The clique responsible for the attempted coup was dispatched in short order by Nobunaga's leading general, the aforementioned diplomat Hideyoshi. Hideyoshi, who later became known as the Napoleon of Japan, was not of _samurai _blood and had in fact begun his military career as Nobunaga's sandal holder. He was soon providing the warlord with astute military advice, and it was only a matter of time until he was a trusted lieutenant. He was the first (and last) shogun of peasant stock, and his sudden rise to power caused aristocratic eyebrows to be raised all across Japan. Physically unimposing, he was one of the seminal figures in world history, widely acknowledged to have been the best military strategist in the sixteenth-century world, and he completed the process of unification. The anecdotes surrounding his life are now cherished legends in Japan. For example, a favorite military stratagem was to bring a recalcitrant _daimyo_ to the very brink of ruin and then fall back, offering an incredibly generous peace. However unwise such a tactic might be in the West, it had the effect in Japan of converting a desperate enemy into an indebted subordinate.