Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 2.djvu/93

 well defended, against the weapons of that era. Minamoto Yoshitsune, whom Japan counts her greatest general after Hideyoshi, stormed the position by descending the apparently inaccessible precipice on the north, and the fame of the exploit gave to the fortifications a vicarious reputation to which they were not really entitled. Japan had nothing worthy to be called a fortress until the days of Oda Nobunaga and Hashiba Hideyoshi, and it was owing to the introduction of fire-arms that her old custom of fosse, earthen parapet, and palisade gave place to massive solid structures, Occidental in conception but Japanese in their leading features. The Portuguese discovered Japan in, and brought with them fire-arms. It is true that the Mongols, when they invaded the island empire at the close of the thirteenth century, employed arquebuses, but the Japanese did not, at that time, acquire sufficient knowledge of these weapons to manufacture and use them subsequently. They derived that knowledge from their Portuguese visitors nearly three centuries later, and their weapons of offence having thus undergone a radical change, the old wooden wall and earthen parapet necessarily received modification. Sweeping changes were rapidly effected in the system of fortification. Forty years after the coming of the Portuguese, Hideyoshi constructed Osaka Castle. Forty years is a brief space in the life of a nation, yet that short