In a room at the Imperial Japanese Army Academy in Tokyo's Akasaka, Prussian Military Adviser Klemens Meckel studied a map showing the disposition of forces before the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600.
Invited to Japan in 1885 to help modernize the Meiji government's military forces, it didn't take Meckel long to determine the outcome. Clearly, he told his Japanese colleagues, from the positioning of the 79,000-strong forces of the western daimyo, which surrounded the 75,000 soldiers of the eastern counterparts, only the West could win.
Contrary to Meckel's instincts though, the East -- led by Tokugawa Ieyasu -- made short and extremely bloody work of the West, and the victory ushered in the more than 260-year rule of the Tokugawa Shogunate.