Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 2.djvu/197

 became highly effective weapons, and in the days of Hideyoshi, the Taikō, combined flank and front attacks by bands of spearmen were used by that resourceful commander. The importance of a strong reserve also received recognition, and in theory, at all events, a tolerably intelligent system of tactics was adopted. But individual skill continued to dominate the situation. A master of the sword or the halberd towered so far above his less expert fellows that he refused to act in unison with them, and it was not until the middle of the seventeenth century that the doctrine of strictly disciplined action obtained practical vogue. Yamaga Soko is said to have been the successful inculcator of this principle. From his time the most approved tactical formation was known as the Yamaga-riu (Yamaga style), though it showed no innovation other than strict subordination of each unit to the general plan. Yamaga is now remembered rather as the military instructor of Oishi Kuranosuke, the leader of the Forty-seven Ronin, than as the founder of a new school of tactics. Perhaps the former is his better title to renown, for his military genius was never subjected to a practical test.

This subject might be dismissed by saying that, prior to the second half of the seventeenth century, the samurai was everything, the system nothing from a tactical point of view, and that strategy was chiefly a matter of deceptions, surprises, and ambushes. But it must not be sup-