Oda Nobunaga – Japan’s Greatest Warlord Pt. 2
Welcome to part two of this study of arguably the greatest samurai of all time. In this part, we’ll be looking at some of the reasons why he’s considered the greatest by so many. I hinted at one reason at the end of part one, where Oda Nobunaga dealt a devastating blow to the Imagawa at the battle of Okehazama―one of the three major upsets of the Sengoku era. He wasn’t out of the water yet, though; the Imagawa continued to limp on under the command of Yoshimoto’s son, Ujizane. Worse yet, there were bigger sharks in the water than the Imagawa.
Saitō Yoshitastu
Mino, to the north of Owari, was back on Nobunaga’s naughty list. This may come as a surprise since in part one I explained that Nobunaga was married to the daughter of Saitō Dōsan, who ruled over the province. Unfortunately, though, not everyone was as big a fan of Dōsan as Oda Nobunaga. In 1556, Dōsan’s son, Yoshitatsu, led a rebellion against his father(whom Yoshitastu may have believed was not actually his real father) and killed him by Nagaragawa river. Upon hearing word of the battle, Nobunaga led a large troop of reinforcements north, but they didn’t make it in time. When his scouts informed him of his father-in-law’s death, he had no choice but to turn back and consider his strategy against Yoshitastu.
As it turned out, what with his brother’s rebellion and the Ise no kami Oda problem, Nobunaga was too busy to deal with Yoshitatsu. When he finally managed to clear up all the mess in Owari, he turned his sights to the north. Luckily, however, the situation resolved itself; Yoshitatsu died in 1561, leaving his 13-year-old son, Tatsuoki in charge of Mino. Ever the opportunist, just two days after Yoshitastu’s death, Nobunaga began his campaign. Since this campaign ended up taking a good few years, let’s return to it in a bit after we go back and take a look at what happened to the Imagawa after Okehazama.
Forming alliances
Matsudaira Motoyasu
Oda Nobunaga succeeded in driving the Imagawa army back to their home region of Suruga, but he didn’t manage to obtain any new land for his trouble. Instead, he obtained a new and―what would prove to be―powerful ally. Matsudaira Motoyasu controlled an area of land in Mikawa known as Okazaki, located close to Owari’s eastern border. Sandwiched between the Oda and the Imagawa, Motoyasu’s father had spent many a stressful year bouncing from alliance to alliance in an effort to prevent his territory from being swallowed up. As a result, Motoyasu ended up spending most of his childhood as a hostage of both families.
He was 17 when Okehazama broke out. Still a hostage of the Imagawa at the time, he participated on Yoshimoto’s side, carrying supplies to Ōdaka castle. Luckily, as he wasn’t part of the main battle, he was able to escape. But rather than run back to Suruga, he decided to leave the Imagawa and return to Okazaki. Naturally, Ujizane wasn’t happy about this decision. Despite his former masters having been weakened, though, Motoyasu still didn’t have the power to fend off the Imagawa army. Likewise, Nobunaga needed to be able to focus on Mino without having to worry about another Imagawa invasion. And so the two formed an alliance. Nobunaga married his daughter, Tokuhime, to Motoyasu’s son, Nobuyasu. With the east under the watch of the Matsudaira, Nobunaga was free to turn his sights back to Mino.
Azai Nagamasa
Motoyasu wasn’t the only alliance Nobunaga formed; he also married his sister to Azai Nagamasa, the daimyō in charge of the area to the northeast of Ōmi. If you check the map of ancient Japan, you’ll see that not only did this get Nobunaga one step closer to the capital, but since Ōmi shared a border with Mino, it also allowed him to keep Tatsuoki in check.
Takeda Shingen
Oda Nobunaga’s final alliance was a big one: Takeda Shingen. By 1561, the ‘Tiger of Kai’ had managed to take over all but the very northern part of Shinano. This bordered him with the western side of Mino. The only other provinces that shared a border with Mino were Echizen and Hida, but since the former had famously been allied with the Azai for decades and the latter wasn’t home to anyone of significance, neither posed a threat to Nobunaga’s plans. He effectively had Tatsuoki cornered. Better yet, since the Takeda and the Imagawa also had an alliance, he was able to ensure that Ujizane didn’t try to finish what his father had started with Owari.
The Mino campaign
Despite Nobunaga’s powerful new alliances, taking Mino wouldn’t be easy; a number of powerful daimyō controlled the province, most of whom were too big for Nobunaga’s army to pose a significant threat to. He knew he would have to play the long game. Slowly but steadily, he began to take down the province’s castles, inching his way closer to Inabayama―the largest and most impenetrable castle in all of Mino. As he gained notoriety within the region, smaller daimyō began to switch sides. By 1565, the tides were well and truly in Nobunaga’s favour. It was then that fate presented him with possibly the greatest opportunity of his career: Ashikaga Yoshiaki.
Ashikaga Yoshiaki
Earlier in the year, Yoshiaki’s older brother, Yoshiteru―13th shōgun of the Muromachi shōgunate―was assassinated by the Miyoshi, who controlled the capital. We’ll leave the details of this to another article, but for now all you need to know is that Yoshiaki was desperately seeking a daimyō powerful enough to support his bid for shōgun and help him beat the Miyoshi and their chosen candidate to the capital.
Aided by Hosokawa Fujitaka and Akechi Mitsuhide―both deathly loyal to the shōgunate― Yoshiaki sent correspondences to a number of daimyō in the neighbouring regions. However, the age was Sengoku; most daimyō were busy with their own campaigns. No one had the time or the will to take on this side quest. Nobunaga was no different; his ongoing war with Mino gave him perhaps a better excuse than anyone not to take on the challenge. But as anyone who’s played a modern-day RPG knows, when the main story gets too stressful, the best thing to do is take a break from it and unwind with a relaxing, unrelated side mission. Nobunaga sent word to Yoshiaki promising to provide him safe passage to the capital.
Eager to speed up the process, Yoshiaki negotiated a ceasefire between Nobunaga and Tatsuoki. However, the following year, when Nobunaga had completed his preparations and was on the verge of marching his army out of Owari, Tatsuoki broke the ceasefire. Yoshiaki had no choice but to retreat to Echizen and seek refuge under Asakura Yoshikage. He was beginning to sweat; the Miyoshi were already laying the groundwork to have his cousin, Yoshihide, installed as shōgun. Unless Yoshiaki could make it to the capital first, with no other family members throwing their names in the hat, the court would have no choice but to accept the Miyoshi’s offer.
Conquering Mino
One year later, in 1567, the ball finally started rolling. Disenchanted with young Tatsuoki’s lacklustre political strategy, the Mino Triumvirate―three of the most powerful daimyō in the region―made a collective decision to defect to Oda Nobunaga’s side. Before he could even collect their hostages and officially seal the deal, Nobunaga charged his army to Inabayama Castle, led an all-out attack, and forced Tatsuoki to flee to Ise. With the Mino army defeated, Nobunaga made Inabayama his new base of operations and changed the name of the area to ‘Gifu’, the name by which the prefecture is known today.
Storming the Capital
Before his momentum could die down, Nobunaga followed on from his success in Mino by invading Ise. Since the region wasn’t home to any particularly powerful daimyō, it was fairly easy to conquer. Nobunaga put one of his greatest generals, Takigawa Kazumasu, in charge of the operation. After Kazumasu defeated the Kanbe and Nagano clans, Nobunaga had his third son and one of his younger brothers adopted into the families. The Kitabatake proved to be more challenging, but Nobunaga managed to force a surrender and adopt his second son into the family, giving him control over the bulk of the province.
Having now either taken over or allied himself with all surrounding areas, the only clan left standing in the way of Nobunaga’s path to the capital was the Rokkaku. Unfortunately, since there had been bad blood between the Rokkaku and the Azai for years, being Azai Nagamasa’s brother-in-law didn’t bid well for Nobunaga. In addition, by this time, the Miyoshi had succeeded in having Yoshihide named the 14th shōgun. The Rokkaku had famously remained loyal to the shōgunate for 80 years, ever since they suffered a defeat at the hands of the 9th shōgun in 1487. That being the case, it was unlikely they would be willing to listen to Yoshiaki’s plight.
Nevertheless, Nobunaga made two attempts to negotiate safe passage to the capital, both of which were met with a shake of the head. For his third attempt, he tried a more forceful approach, advancing an army five times that of the Rokkaku’s total forces, annihilating them and driving their survivors to the very south of Ōmi. His momentum maxed out, he charged on to the capital, defeated the Miyoshi, and, one month later, installed Yoshiaki as the 15th(and final) shōgun of the Muromachi shōgunate.
Securing the capital
As an expression of his gratitude, Yoshiaki offered Nobunaga the titles of kanrei and deputy shōgun, both of which Nobunaga refused. Since he would later go on to accept all manner of titles from the court, in all likelihood, he didn’t want to be associated with the shōgunate any more than was necessary. Accepting the titles would have been akin to admitting that he was lower down the hierarchy than Yoshiaki, which would make taking down the shōgunate an even greater mutiny than it had to be. Perhaps even at this early stage, Oda Nobunaga already held hopes of conquering the entire country. Whatever the case, he arranged temporary accommodation for Yoshiaki in a temple named Honkokuji until he could construct a new palace to replace Nijō palace, which the Miyoshi burned down when they killed the former shōgun.
His work complete for now, Oda Nobunaga returned to Mino. However, just three months later, the Miyoshi teamed up with Saitō Tatsuoki to attack Honkokuji. The moment word reached Mino, Nobunaga charged his army back towards the capital. Before he could arrive, though, Hosokawa Fujitaka and Akechi Mitsuhide had already managed to drive off the enemy forces and protect the new shōgun. Not willing to take any further chances, he remained in the capital to oversee the construction of the new Nijō palace.
The Echizen conquest
With construction of the palace underway, Nobunaga sent word to all major daimyō in the neighbouring provinces asking them to come to the capital to greet their new shōgun. Most were willing to comply with this request. One notable exception was Asakura Yoshikage, who, if you’ll remember, very kindly hosted Yoshiaki until Nobunaga was able to lead him to the capital. Perhaps he felt that this act of kindness exempted him from the visit, or perhaps he was busy fending off members of Honganji, the most powerful Buddhist sect in his region. A third theory is that since Oda Nobunaga and Asakura Yoshikage both came from provinces formerly under the rule of the Shiba clan, Yoshikage considered Nobunaga to be of equal status to him, and, as such, felt he shouldn’t have to take orders from him.
Whatever the case, it provided Nobunaga with the perfect excuse to attack Echizen and take the province for himself, providing him the foothold he needed to expand north into the Hokuriku region. Perfect as this opportunity appeared, however, it opened a can of worms that would continue to plague Oda Nobunaga for the following ten years.
The Battle of Kanegasaki
In April of 1570, Oda Nobunaga led his army north. At first, he met with little resistance as his men tore through a number of small castles on the road to Tsuruga, advancing towards Yoshikage’s stronghold, Ichinodani Castle. It was smooth sailing until they reached Kanegasaki, where disaster struck: a scout returned with news that Azai Nagamasa was leading an army west to aid the Asakura.
Remember how I mentioned that the Azai and the Asakura had been allies since far back? Well, Nagamasa’s father was still conservative enough to protect that alliance and convince his son to turn his back on his brother-in-law. It was such a shocking twist that Nobunaga refused to believe it at first. However, as reports from various other scouts corroborated the story, he had no choice but to abandon the campaign and flee to the capital, leaving Akechi Mitsuhide and another of his up-and-coming generals, Kinoshita Tōkichirō, to fend off his former ally.
The Battle of Anegawa
Rather than sit around and mope about the situation, Oda Nobunaga got in touch with his more loyal ally, Matsudaira Motoyasu, who by now had changed his name to Tokugawa Ieyasu―a name with which I’m sure many of you are familiar. If the Asakura were teamed up with the Azai, Nobunaga was more than happy to make it a tag-team battle. He met up with Ieyasu and marched their collective army to Anegawa, slightly east of Azai Nagamasa’s main castle.
Nagamasa rendezvoused with Yoshikage, and the two marched their armies to the battlefield. Both sides were more or less equally matched in terms of numbers, but the Asakura/Azai army was no match for the Tokugawa army’s advanced flanking techniques. After suffering losses totalling over a thousand men, they retreated. Oda Nobunaga wasn’t able to destroy his enemies that day, but he did take Yokoyama Castle, the castle directly south of Nagamasa’s home castle of Odani. This was the first step in his plan to lay siege to the Azai and block off all potential reinforcement routes.
Ishiyama-Honganji
With the Azai and Asakura at bay, it was time to deal the finishing blow to the Miyoshi, who were holding themselves up in the province of Settsu. Oda Nobunaga marched his army into the area, confident that today would be the day he’d finally be able to cross the Miyoshi off his list. By stepping foot into Settsu, however, he unwittingly awoke a sleeping giant―a giant that would torment him for years to come. Settsu was home to the Jōdo-shinshū Buddhist sect’s main headquarters: Ishiyama-Honganji. Their main temple complex was a powerful fortress surrounded by rivers, marshland and ocean. It was virtually impenetrable. In fact, it was such a prime location that subsequent powers would eventually select it as the site for Ōsaka Castle.
Moreover, Honganji had tens of thousands of followers willing to fight to the death to protect their sect. With a tighter, more loyal close-knit community than any other Buddhist sect at the time, Ishiyama-Honganji was not something you wanted to make an enemy of! Oda Nobunaga was aware of this fact as he tread carefully into their territory.
Unfortunately, though, he was unaware that he had already made an enemy of them before even setting foot on their land. The reason for the sect’s decision is unknown. Kennyo, their leader, claimed in a letter he sent to his followers in Ōmi that Nobunaga had demanded he leave Ishiyama and destroy the temple complex. However, there is no evidence in any other historical source that backs up this claim. The most likely theory is that the Miyoshi had curried favour with Honganji over the years by helping them expand south into the Yamato province. Although this expansion ultimately failed, it’s conceivable that Kennyo still felt indebted to the capital’s former rulers.
The anti-Nobunaga Network
As if things couldn’t get worse, Azai and Asakura picked that moment to attack Oda Nobunaga’s castles in the south of Ōmi. He had no choice but to abandon the battle and return to defend his territory. A panicked Azai/Asakura army fled to Mount Hiei and took refuse with Enryakuji―headquarters of the Tendai-shū Buddhist sect. While Nobunaga laid siege to the temple, demanding that they hand over the fugitives, an army of Honganji’s followers marched north from Nagashima, Ise, and continued what the Azai and Asakura armies had started. Not only did they succeed in felling one of Nobunaga’s castles, but they also forced the death of one of his younger brothers.
In the space of six months, Oda Nobunaga had made enemies to the north, the south, and the west. The situation was chaotic. Luckily, though, he’d manage to scare Nagamasa and Yoshikage enough to force them to have the emperor intervene and negotiate a ceasefire. Honganji, however, would take a significantly larger amount of persuasion. Oda Nobunaga was about to face the first true test of his talents. Join me in part three to find out how he fares.
