Samurai Commanders (2)

Oda Nobunaga (1534–82)

The surprise defeat of Imagawa Yoshimoto at the battle of Okehazama in 1560 was covered in Samurai Commanders (1) 940–1576. The victory was achieved by Oda Nobunaga, who was to go on to become one of the greatest samurai commanders of all time.

Oda Nobunaga was born in 1534 as the son and heir of Oda Nobuhide, a daimyo of Owari province. The greatest threat to the survival of the Oda domain had been posed by Imagawa Yoshimoto, so the battle of Okehazama was as significant for the Oda family on a personal scale as it was for Japan as a whole. Like his father Nobuhide before him, Nobunaga enthusiastically embraced new military technology, which he famously displayed on the occasion of a visit to his future father-in-law Saito Dosan in 1553. As part of Nobunaga’s entourage, 800 ashigaru came armed with long spears and 500 carried arquebuses. Saito Dosan was much impressed, and, somewhat ironically, out of all of Nobunaga’s future military conquests, the most significant was to be the taking of Inabayama (Gifu) castle from Saito Dosan’s grandson in 1567.

With Gifu as his base, and with his ally Tokugawa Ieyasu providing his rearguard along the Tokaido road, Nobunaga entered Kyoto in 1568 and deposed the last Ashikaga Shogun, Yoshiaki. Oda Nobunaga’s capture of Kyoto was a significant and very symbolic step. All the other great daimyo felt that Nobunaga had stolen a march on them. The main local opposition to this important development in Japanese politics came from the Asai and Asakura families, who threatened Nobunaga from the north. Oda Nobunaga won the victory of Anegawa against the Asai and Asakura in 1570. This was a fierce encounter fought in blazing summer sunshine across the bed of the Anegawa River, and resulted in an Oda victory. By all accounts this was a classic samurai battle with much hand-to-hand fighting with the famous Japanese swords. Over the next three years all other traces of the Asai and Asakura were eliminated when Nobunaga captured their castles of Odani and Ichijo ga tani.

He was also challenged by the populist Buddhist sect of Jodo-Shinshu, whose armies, the Ikko-ikki, were to engage Nobunaga in war for the next 12 years. The Ikko-ikki proved far more intractable to Oda Nobunaga’s plans than any rival daimyo. From the early Sengoku period these armies, largely recruited from peasants, had become something of a third force in Japanese politics. In Kaga province they had even ejected a daimyo from his homeland and set up a territory controlled by an alliance of small landowners and farmers who shared the same fanatical religious beliefs.

The Ikko-ikki of the Osaka area provoked Japan’s longest siege, in which Nobunaga was forced to spend ten years, off and on, reducing their formidable fortress-cathedral, the Ishiyama Honganji. This long and bitter campaign was directed against a massive castle complex built in the latest style and situated within a maze of reed beds and creeks. Supplies were run to the defenders by sea courtesy of the Mori family, and the Ikko-ikki also had large numbers of arquebuses.

In addition to the Ikko-ikki, Nobunaga was opposed by another religiously motivated army, whose members lived on the holy mountain of Hieizan. This was not ostensibly a military installation. It was the centre of Tendai Buddhism, and during earlier centuries had visited its wrath upon Kyoto in the form of armies of warrior monks. The monks had now allied themselves with the Ikko-ikki against Nobunaga. When marching to Echizen province in 1570, Nobunaga had passed beneath the vast bulk of Hieizan and realized how it threatened his lines of communication to the north from Kyoto. So in 1571 the mountain was surrounded by a huge army, and Nobunaga’s troops simply advanced up the paths and shot or hacked to death every living thing they met, as a warning to any armies, clerical or lay, that dared oppose him. This was probably the only military action of Nobunaga’s career so controversial that even some of his own generals opposed the move.

This typical display of utter ruthlessness ensured that Oda Nobunaga went from strength to strength, and in 1575 he gained his most famous victory at the siege of Nagashino castle. Nagashino was a frontier fortress that was attacked by Takeda Katsuyori. Nobunaga marched to its relief and set up simple defensive lines a few miles away. The Takeda were famous for their devastating cavalry charges, but this time their intended victim was armed with 3,000 arquebuses. Discipline was such that Nobunaga’s men were able to deliver organized fire, perhaps even rotating volleys, into the successive waves of Takeda attack. The charge was blunted, and in the subsequent hand-to-hand combat Oda Nobunaga won the day.

In 1576 Nobunaga built Azuchi castle, which became his main base. Azuchi was sufficiently far from Kyoto to avoid the periodic uprisings and protests that had always spoiled life in the capital, but it was near enough to allow Nobunaga to control any situation that might arise. In 1578 the Mori family were frustrated in their attempts to aid the Ikko-ikki at the sea battle of Kizugawaguchi. More campaigns followed against the Ikko-ikki in Osaka, where Nobunaga won his final victory against the Ishiyama Honganji in 1580. He then conducted successful campaigns against Ise and Iga provinces in 1580 and 1581.By 1582 Oda Nobunaga controlled most of central Japan, including Kyoto and the strategic Tokaido and Nakasendo roads to the east. Following the fall of the Ishiyama Honganji, Nobunaga had begun to extend his influence westwards for the first time. Two of his most skilled and experienced generals began separate but parallel campaigns in this direction. Toyotomi Hideyoshi started the pacification of the southern coast of western Honshu on the Inland Sea, while his comrade in arms Akechi Mitsuhide pursued similar goals on the northern edge of the Sea of Japan. Much of Hideyoshi’s campaigning was carried out against the Mori family, and the summer of 1582 was to find Hideyoshi sitting patiently in front of the Mori’s castle of Takamatsu, which a dammed river was slowly but very surely flooding. It was at this point in his career that Hideyoshi received the message that was to change his life and with it the destiny of Japan. The defiance of the Mori had forced Hideyoshi to request reinforcements from Oda Nobunaga, who had hurried to send them on ahead under Akechi Mitsuhide, intending to follow personally shortly afterwards. This left Nobunaga perilously unguarded, and that night Akechi’s army wheeled round and marched back into Kyoto to attack Nobunaga in the Honnoji temple where he was staying. The temple was set on fire and, overwhelmed by superior numbers, Oda Nobunaga committed suicide and his body was consumed in the flames.

So perished the first of Japan’s three unifiers and one of Japan’s greatest samurai commanders. His skills at organization, his tactical flair and above all his visionary use of military technology placed him in the front rank of generals. His other outstanding characteristic was his great ruthlessness. Defeated enemies were usually exterminated, and the honourable surrender of the Ishiyama Honganji was an exception to a general rule that saw him massacre his victims in their thousands. His violent death brought a violent life fittingly to its end.