Being in Yonezawa evokes my imagination of Japan’s Sengoku (Warring States) period.

The historical developments of China and Japan indeed share many similarities (though there are, of course, many differences). Generally speaking, Japan’s development in modern history seems to replay Chinese history from over two thousand years ago. Japan’s Sengoku period shares a remarkably high degree of similarity with China’s Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods; the biggest difference perhaps being that China’s period lasted longer, while Japan’s was relatively short.

In ancient China, the King of Zhou was regarded as the universal ruler, but as the Zhou royal house declined in its later stages, feudal lords rose up and competed for dominance over the central plains. Similarly, Japan also viewed the Emperor as the supreme leader, but his substantive power was extremely weak. Daimyos (feudal lords) from various regions attacked each other and fought for territory. The core figures of this period included Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and Tokugawa Ieyasu, who ultimately unified the realm and established the Edo Shogunate.

“The success of one general is built on the bones of ten thousand.” War—especially civil war—is extremely cruel, and I oppose any idea that romanticizes war. During Japan’s Sengoku period, not only did massive numbers of soldiers die on the battlefield, but after Tokugawa Ieyasu unified the realm, a very thorny issue of political purges also emerged.

Take the Uesugi clan as an example. They were originally senior vassals during the Toyotomi regime (ranking among the Five Elders) and were granted a massive territory of 1.2 million koku in Aizu, arguably reaching the pinnacle of a vassal’s career. However, when Toyotomi Hideyoshi passed away, the political landscape drastically changed, raising the question of whether to swear loyalty to Tokugawa Ieyasu. Consequently, the anti-Tokugawa faction was defeated in the Battle of Sekigahara, and the Uesugi clan immediately faced the severe crisis of annihilation (abolition of their domain).

Similar scenarios have continuously replayed throughout any era and location: when leadership changes hands, what kind of purges will the old vassals face?

According to the conventions of the time, Tokugawa Ieyasu could have exterminated the Uesugi clan. In ancient times, there were no concepts of human rights or modern rule of law (the so-called “law” was often just a tool to govern subordinates, rather than a rule restricting superiors). With a single command from the overlord, the masterminds would easily be beheaded, and it would often implicate many others, sometimes leaving even commoners unable to escape disaster.

But through the political lobbying of chief retainer Naoe Kanetsugu and others, coupled with the clan head Uesugi Kagekatsu personally going to Kyoto to apologize and plead with Tokugawa Ieyasu, Ieyasu ultimately did not completely annihilate them. However, he handed down a severe punishment: demoting the Uesugi clan to the remote and barren Yonezawa, drastically shrinking their territory to a mere 300,000 koku.

Although being spared from a bloodbath was a great grace, one must never think this kind of “pay cut” was just a light penalty!

The Uesugi clan was not merely a “family” in the modern sense; to some extent, it was equivalent to a state, or at least a massive corporation. Imagine if a modern large company had to shrink its revenue scale to a quarter—how many employees would lose their jobs and livelihoods?

In those days, the head of the Uesugi clan led a massive migration of vassals (samurai and nobles) and commoners to the rural backwater of Yonezawa.

Faced with financial difficulties, the Uesugi clan head insisted on maintaining “righteousness” (giri), refusing to dismiss any of the vassals who had originally received high stipends. To solve the survival problem of this massive population, Naoe Kanetsugu launched comprehensive water management and agricultural reforms in Yonezawa. The samurai even adopted a “half-farmer, half-samurai” lifestyle, personally working the fields to open up wastelands. This will of master and servant sharing joys and sorrows eventually led everyone through the crisis, laying a solid foundation for the Yonezawa Domain that lasted for 270 years.

However, the “half-farmer, half-samurai” approach and water management of the Naoe Kanetsugu era, while barely stabilizing the situation initially, could not eradicate the Uesugi clan’s structural financial dead knot.

The Uesugi clan originally had the system and strength of a million koku. Even after being demoted to Yonezawa, they retained their massive retainer band. In modern corporate terms, this was like a company whose revenue plummeted by three-quarters, yet refused to lay off workers, continuing to maintain the personnel costs of its golden age. Even worse, in the mid-17th century (1664), the Uesugi clan nearly faced abolition by the shogunate because the clan head died suddenly without an heir. Ultimately, although they kept the family name, their territory was halved again, plunging miserably to a mere 150,000 koku!

Using an income of 150,000 koku to feed a retainer scale originally meant for a million koku is simply an impossible task in economics. By the middle of the Edo period, the Yonezawa Domain was deeply in debt, falling to the brink of severe “financial bankruptcy.” The samurai were so poor they couldn’t even afford decent clothes, and the people in the domain lived in destitution. The head of the Uesugi clan at the time was once so desperate that he considered returning the territory to the shogunate—an ultimate humiliation for a warrior family, equivalent to a modern company voluntarily filing for bankruptcy liquidation in court.

At this life-and-death juncture, a figure hailed by later generations as “Japan’s greatest corporate restructuring expert” emerged: Uesugi Yozan.

Yozan was not originally of Uesugi blood but an adopted son from a small domain in Kyushu. At the age of 17, he took over this super mess of heavy debts and low morale. Faced with this almost unsolvable dilemma, Yozan’s reforms can be considered the ultimate textbook for modern corporate crisis management.

He also did not choose the easiest path of “mass layoffs,” but started with “extreme top-down revenue generation and cost-cutting.” He first targeted himself, drastically cutting the domain lord’s living expenses by over 80%. He not only wore coarse cloth but even restricted himself to “one soup, one side dish” per meal. The highest leader leading by example and living a more austere life than commoners showed a burning-the-boats determination, rendering the previously grumbling vassals speechless.

But solving a financial crisis cannot rely solely on saving money; it requires changing the deep-rooted “corporate culture.”

The Uesugi samurai had always held onto the pride of “we are descendants of the Sengoku God of War, Uesugi Kenshin,” unable to let go of their prestigious vanity and status. Yozan dedicated himself to breaking this useless pride. He personally farmed the fields, encouraging the samurai to completely lay down their swords and engage in production. He introduced the cultivation of lacquer trees, mulberry trees, and paper mulberry (raw material for papermaking), vigorously developing sericulture and the silk weaving industry. The samurai class, who previously only knew how to wield weapons, gradually transformed into technocrats and laborers driving the regional industrial chain, successfully building Yonezawa into a renowned hub for textiles and special products.

Yozan left behind a famous quote known to every household in Japan: “為せば成る、為さねば成らぬ何事も” (Where there is a will, there is a way; if something is not achieved, it is because one did not try hard enough).

He spent most of his life finally pulling the Yonezawa Domain back from the abyss of bankruptcy. In his later years, the Yonezawa Domain had not only paid off all its massive century-old debts but even left a surplus in the treasury. This resilience of not abandoning grassroots employees (vassals) and relying on the leader to lead by example to guide the team out of desperation not only allowed the Yonezawa Domain to successfully survive until the end of the Edo period, but it is also said that even former US President John F. Kennedy was deeply moved, once publicly stating that Uesugi Yozan was the Japanese politician he admired most.

Strolling through Yonezawa today, looking at the fields cultivated by samurai back then and the inherited Yonezawa weaving, what this city carries is not only the romance of the Sengoku period, but a history of organizational survival intertwined with blood and tears, spanning hundreds of years.