Oh, Taiga dramas. So darling. Sengoku era is particularly problematic in that regard, because it's possibly The Era of history that everyone is expected to know (for a fascinating stat, over half of the Taiga dramas in the last ten years have been about some aspect of Sengoku). It's NHK, too, which means you will absolutely get the most (socially) conservative interpretation. And one thing that you should remember is that Sengoku-era studies in English have actually been surprisingly heavily influenced by feminist scholarship, in the sense that from the 1950s onward feminist scholars have been writing some of the major papers in English. There is a considerably denser amount of more sexist Japanese scholarship making up the backbone over here. But believe me, I sympathize. I'm attempting to watch the current Taiga, about Taira Kiyomori, and apparently Retired Emperor Go-Shirakawa is off his rocker, noisily and viciously. This...does not so much make sense with his historical persona or his persona in Heike monogatari, preeminent story of the period. I'm really not sure where they got it; it bothers me and I don't even like the man.
tldr; For creative interpretations of history you might be better off looking at animanga. A lot of them are aimed younger (Taiga dramas are geared more towards middle-age), with less of an assumption of knowledge, and they're more wedded to 'interesting!' than 'traditional interpretation'. For facts, though...yeah, university library is good for what it's worth. Information available in English on the period sucks. (There is, however, a biography called Hideyoshi of which every university library I have ever seen has at least one copy. It's blah writing, but it has some interesting information, and there's plenty on Nobunaga as a contrast to Toyotomi Hideyoshi.)
Hmm. Other random results of history study. Possibly a major element of Nobunaga's infamy is the fact that he razed Buddhist monasteries. Historical figures who made a policy of razing churches don't come off too well in European history, generally, even if they were excellent rulers in other ways. Especially since the Tokugawa era, which saw the first major welling of historical research, relied heavily on a network of Buddhist temples to keep the country pacified. And Nobunaga's willingness to use Christianity against Buddhism didn't endear him to Meiji anti-foreign nationalists either.
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Date: 12 Mar 2012 10:07 pm (UTC)tldr; For creative interpretations of history you might be better off looking at animanga. A lot of them are aimed younger (Taiga dramas are geared more towards middle-age), with less of an assumption of knowledge, and they're more wedded to 'interesting!' than 'traditional interpretation'. For facts, though...yeah, university library is good for what it's worth. Information available in English on the period sucks. (There is, however, a biography called Hideyoshi of which every university library I have ever seen has at least one copy. It's blah writing, but it has some interesting information, and there's plenty on Nobunaga as a contrast to Toyotomi Hideyoshi.)
Hmm. Other random results of history study. Possibly a major element of Nobunaga's infamy is the fact that he razed Buddhist monasteries. Historical figures who made a policy of razing churches don't come off too well in European history, generally, even if they were excellent rulers in other ways. Especially since the Tokugawa era, which saw the first major welling of historical research, relied heavily on a network of Buddhist temples to keep the country pacified. And Nobunaga's willingness to use Christianity against Buddhism didn't endear him to Meiji anti-foreign nationalists either.