Abstract
The tenkabito—“rulers of the state”—were born in Owari Province and each acquired control over an immense amount of territory that included the northern provinces, the Kinai region, and the Owari, Mino, and Ise provinces—the third area constituting the three provinces of the Pan-Ise Sea region. This chapter focuses on their respective implementations of new policies and their construction of new states in central Japan. After passing through wars of state expansion—the wars of unification fought by the first two of the unifiers—these entities subsequently grew into a centralized state, encompassing the whole Japanese archipelago. In addition, the chapter discusses how Tokugawa Ieyasu reorganized the centralized state into a compound state composed of the bakufu and the han domains, that is, local states. One reason why Nobunaga and Hideyoshi each pushed forward with enlarging their territories, it may be thought, was—above all else—to acquire gold and silver for coinage, to support and enlarge their war economies.