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Oda Nobunaga

"The general changes his actions and revises his plans so that people will not recognise them. He changes his abode and goes by circuitous routes so that people cannot anticipate him."

— Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Imagawa Yoshimoto, the leader of the Imagawa, was one daimyo with an ambition to be Shogun, and in 1560 he marched towards Kyoto, taking advantage of the fact that the Hojo and Uesugi were busy fighting each other. Between him and his target lay three provinces, one of which just happened to be Oda Nobunaga’s home, Owari. Initially, the campaign went well for the Imagawa. Tokugawa Ieyasu took the frontier fort at Marune and all that stood between the Imagawa’s 25,000 men and victory was Nobunaga and his small army of 2000 soldiers.

"By victory gained in crossing swords with individuals, or enjoining battle with large numbers, we can attain power and for ourselves or our lord. This is the virtue of strategy."

— Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings, The Ground Book

Nobunaga decided to attack. After a brilliant bit of trickery, he managed to convince Yoshimoto that his army was camped in one place, then ambushed the main Imagawa force in a gorge. The Battle of Okehazama lasted minutes rather than hours. Yoshimoto was killed, and only realised at the last minute that the samurai who were attacking weren’t part of his own force who were the worse for drink. Oda Nobunaga was now a real power in the land and now the new liege of Tokugawa Ieyasu. He had been freed from his obligation to the Imagawa clan by Yoshimoto’s death.

The temptation to march on Kyoto must have been there for Nobunaga as well, but he bided his time and secured alliances with his neighbours by marrying off his daughter and younger sister. He had also married the daughter of another neighbour, Saito Toshimasa, a one-time oil merchant turned daimyo in Mino province, who was widely regarded as a completely bad lot. Toshimasa was rather fond of torturing people in general and boiling people in particular! However, he came to a suitably bad end when his own son, Yoshitatsu, killed him and took control. He, in turn, died of leprosy, but not before Nobunaga had declared war to avenge the rather nasty Toshimasa who was, after all, his father-in-law. This excuse was all he needed to brush the Saito clan aside so that his route to Kyoto and the shogunate was open. Toyotomi Hideyoshi was given the job of destroying the last of the Saito clan, which he carried out in 1564.

All Nobunaga needed was a good excuse to march on the capital, and in 1567, he got one. Ashikaga Yoshiaki was the heir to the shogunate, and a valuable symbol for that very reason. His brother, Yoshiteru, had been previous shogun, and completely under the control of a couple of malicious (and incidentally Christian) courtiers Miyoshi Chokei and Matsunaga Hisahide, who eventually killed him so that they could install his much younger cousin as an even more controllable puppet. Yoshiaki was in danger from the pair, but managed to escape and take refuge with Nobunaga.

Oda Nobunaga entered Kyoto in November 1568 with Yoshiaki as his own puppet Ashikaga shogun. Nobunaga ruled as the real power behind the throne of a ceremonial commander-in-chief of a ceremonial Emperor. There were dynastic reasons why the Oda family would have been unacceptable as shoguns in their own right, but the new arrangement gave Nobunaga the power anyway.

For the rest of his life, he would devote his energies to crushing his remaining rivals. In this, he had two fine lieutenants in Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu. Nobunaga was quite powerful enough to give them all the authority they needed. This is a sign that samurai politics had moved on a little from the dog-eat-dog days. At one point, Hideyoshi and Ieyasu would have been busily plotting against Nobunaga and each other… Now, however, Ieyasu was despatched to crush the Ikko-ikki (in 1563) and had a narrow escape in doing so when two bullets penetrated his armour but didn’t go on to wound him! Nobunaga’s next — successful — proxy campaign was against Miyoshi Chokei and Matsunaga Hisahide who were defeated at the Battle of Sakai in 1567. This battle is noteworthy because of the large numbers of Christian samurai on both sides, who took Mass together before the fighting. Christianity — or perhaps the dedicated Jesuit missionaries who were preaching Christianity — appealed to the samurai and from this point Christian samurai were not unusual. Although Oda Nobunaga never became a Christian, he did support Jesuit missionaries in Japan, undoubtedly because of their political usefulness against troublesome Buddhist sects. Wholesale persecution of Christians still lay in the future.

"When the laws of war indicate certain victory it is surely appropriate to do battle, even if the ruler says there is to be no battle. If the laws of war indicate defeat it is appropriate not to fight, even if the ruler wants war."

— Sun Tzu, The Art of War

The remainder of Nobunaga’s life was a succession of campaigns to secure his control of the country. In 1570, he fell upon the Asakura in Echizen province, but was forced to retreat when his own brother-in-law, Asai Nagamasa, declared for the Asakura clan. Nobunaga returned later in 1570 and fought the indecisive, but victorious Battle of Anegawa. While his forces won the day, they didn’t crush the Asakura and Asai. Troubles now multiplied for Nobunaga and he rapidly found he was facing not only the Asakura and Asai army, but Ikko from Ishiyama Hongan-ji and sohei (warrior monks) from Enryaku-ji near the capital. In addition, Tokugawa Ieyasu was now facing both the Hojo army and Takeda Shingen.

Nobunaga appeared to be encircled, so he decided to attack. His men surrounded Enryaku-ji and killed everyone — man, woman or child — they found in or near the monastery. Nobunaga was now free to turn against his other enemies, but Takeda Shingen moved against him in 1572, almost trapping Tokugawa Ieyasu in Hamamatsu Castle. Ieyasu was faced with a simple choice: stay where he was and fail in his duty to prevent Shingen reaching Kyoto, or fight. He chose to leave the castle and met the Takeda army in the snow at Mikata-ga-hara, a stretch of open moors near the Magome River. The battle was indecisive, and both sides eventually withdrew. Ieyasu returned to Hamamatsu Castle (his job of delaying Shingen had been achieved); Shingen went home.

Shingen came on again in spring 1573, this time into Mikawa province, intent on taking Kyoto for himself. It was not to be. In the fighting that followed, he was wounded by a bullet and died some time later. This loss was a disaster for the Takeda clan as Shingen’s son, Katsuyori, was not the man his father had been. Uesugi Kenshin is said to have wept over the loss of so noble an enemy. Kenshin himself was to die under somewhat mysterious circumstances in 1582. Although nothing has ever been proved, Nobunaga was suspected of having used ninja to remove another rival. One (probably untrue) version of the events around Kenshin’s death is recounted in the section about ninja later in this manual.

"A true samurai cannot possibly forget his wife and family when he goes into battle, because a true samurai never thinks of them at any time!"

— remark attributed to a Takeda retainer

It took two more years before the defeat of the Takeda clan was secured. In 1575 Takeda Katsuyori surrounded Nagashino Castle with his army, but the Oda defenders put up a gallant resistance. Nobunaga saw that the relief expedition would be a chance to crush the Takeda clan, and he was right. The Battle of Nagashino that followed was a triumph for Oda Nobunaga and for the arquebus. Nobunaga organised his 3000 best shots into a single unit and placed them in three lines behind a palisade of stakes. When the Takeda clan charged across a very waterlogged battlefield a blast of gunfire every 20 seconds or so tore them to pieces. Those that survived the gunfire were cut down by Nobunaga’s other soldiers. Even the castle’s defenders left their walls and fell on the rear of the Takeda army. The victory was complete. Katsuyori Takeda managed to escape the carnage, but he was unable to threaten Nobunaga seriously again and was killed in 1582.

Nobunaga now turned eastwards towards the Mori clan. Mori Motonari was dead, but his grandson, Mori Terumoto, ruled a rich domain of ten provinces. Terumoto had been asking for trouble, as he had run through Nobunaga’s naval blockade of the Ikko-ikki at Ishiyama Hongan-ji. Nobunaga responded by sending an army with Toyotomi Hideyoshi, his ashigaru general, and Akechi Mitsuhide (another of his samurai generals) at its head. He continued his campaign against the Ikko-ikki, even building warships with iron plate armour for use against them at one point! It would be another 300 years before armour plate was used in the West. The Ikko were eventually surrounded and in 1580 were forced to give in. The warrior fanatics had at last been broken as a power. While all this was happening, Nobunaga also started to build a castle at Azuchi on Lake Biwa near Kyoto. It was colossal, and a sign of where the true power in Japan now lay. It was also revolutionary for the way it took firearms into account, with stout stone defences and loopholes for gunners.

Nobunaga’s army now turned its full power towards the Mori. Toyotomi Hideyoshi had been making steady progress, and had besieged their castle at Takamtsu — even the course of the nearby river was altered so that the place would flood! The entire Mori clan gathered to try and lift the siege, and Hideyoshi summoned reinfocements when he realised exactly what he was facing. Ieyasu and, as it turned out, too many Oda warriors were sent out to beef up his army. Nobunaga was left in Kyoto with only 100 men to guard him, instead of the 2000 who normally formed his bodyguard.

Akechi Mitsuhide, on the other hand, had failed in his campaign against the Mori, and had suffered Nobunaga’s scorn because of this and much else. He was moving near Kyoto at the time that Nobunaga was almost unguarded. Quite why he turned his troops around and attacked Nobunaga’s mansion in Kyoto has never been explained, but on 21 June 1582, Nobunaga was shot down on the orders of his own general. He died thanks to the weapon with which he had transformed the battlefield: the arquebus.

Even by the standards of his age, Nobunaga was a ruthless man — his sole idea of a clear victory was the extermination of the enemy. But he did change Japan. His military improvements altered the way wars were fought. At one time, peasants and ji-samurai would leave the fields to fight. Under Nobunaga, men fought or they farmed. The samurai and the ashigaru became warrior classes who didn’t have to return to the land when it was time to gather the harvest. All they had to do was fight for their overlord.

The Thirteen Day Shogun

"The individual without a strategy who takes his enemies lightly will inevitably end up as a captive of another."

— Sun Tzu, The Art of War

When news of Akechi Mitsuhide’s treachery reached Toyotomi Hideyoshi, he immediately negotiated a peace treaty with the Mori clan and then marched on Kyoto. In the meantime, Mitsuhide was following the time-honoured precedent of slaughtering every one of Nobunaga’s relatives that he could reach. Tokugawa Ieyasu had vanished into hiding. Although it probably wasn’t Mitsuhide’s doing, the magnificent Azuchi Castle was burned down. Days later, the Akechi shogunate was over. Hideyoshi attacked and Mitsuhide fled. He was captured by plunder-seeking peasants and beaten to death. He had been the "Thirteen Day Shogun."

Toyotomi Hideyohsi was now the "official" avenger of Nobunaga and in a very strong position. His humble ashigaru beginnings made him popular among his own ashigaru soldiers and he was a singularly able commander. Naturally, the surviving relatives of Oda Nobunaga — in particular his third son, Nobutaka — were not too keen on seeing Hideyoshi in control. There were also Nobunaga’s other generals to consider as well. Apart from Tokugawa Ieyasu, Shibata Katsuie, Niwa Nagahide, Takigawa Kazumasu and Ikeda Nobuteru had equally good claims to take over from Nobunaga!

Warfare was the only likely result of all this, despite — or perhaps because of — Hideyoshi’s suggestion that Nobunaga’s one year old grandson should be the new clan leader. A puppet with a powerful man behind him was a very traditional way of taking power. The next months presented Hideyoshi with a difficult series of campaigns. By far the most dangerous threat came from Shibata Katsuie. Katsuie had actually tried to attack Akechi Mitsuhide, but had arrived too late to share in the credit of killing him. Had Katsuie managed to co-ordinate his actions with those of his allies, Oda Nobutaka and Takigawa Kazumasu, the three might well have won. Ieyasu and the others were waiting too, either for a chance to take the prize, or to make sure that they backed the winning side!

Katsuie, however, was not blessed with wise allies. While the Shibata lands were still snowed under, Nobutaka decided to attack. This gave Hideyoshi the chance to divide and conquer his opponents. Nobutaka was surrounded in the Oda clan’s Gifu Castle and begged for mercy. At this point, Hideyoshi did something entirely remarkable: he spared Nobutaka’s life and took hostages to ensure his future good behaviour. In the just-passed old days, Nobutaka’s father, Nobunaga, would have killed every enemy within reach! Hideyoshi then split Takigawa Kazumasu’s forces by bribing a key garrison and even captured Kazumasu himself.

"Those who come seeking peace without a treaty are plotting."

— Sun Tzu, The Art of War

By this point, Shibata Katsuie was only just able to send out troops thanks to the thawing snow, and Oda Nobutaka now repaid mercy with rebellion. The Shibata general, Sakuma Morimasa, however, made a serious error of judgement when — having failed to learn the lessons of the Battle of Nagashino — he attacked arquebus-armed troops in a strong position. The resulting Battle of Shizugatake in 1583 was a disaster for the Shibata forces, and they were pursued back to the gates of Katsuie’s castle. Recognising that his war against Hideyoshi was lost, Katusuie took his own life and burned his fortress. When he heard the news, Oda Nobutaka saw the writing on the wall for his own chances of success and took his own life as well.

In the end, Ieyasu submitted to the authority of Hideyoshi. His decision was supremely practical. Together, the two men were unbeatable, and Hideyoshi, the older man, could not last forever… With Ieyasu now an ally, Hideyoshi was in a position to conquer the rest of Japan. That he managed this as quickly as he did is a tribute not only to his military skills, but also to his political skills. When facing Nobunaga, for example, there was little point in not fighting to the bitter end — after all, he was likely to kill everyone whether they resisted fiercely or not. Hideyoshi, however, was more political (or cunning). He was generous towards his enemies, letting them keep some of their holdings (but he did need conquered lands to use as rewards for his own loyal followers). He also took hostages, but he didn’t kill off entire clans. He left them in charge as they had been, having first secured their loyalty. As a result, he managed to add the armies of his enemies to his own forces and grow stronger over time. Hideyoshi, however, didn’t need to take all of a clan’s landholdings, because he had also changed the way that samurai were rewarded for their actions in battle. Rather than handing out land, he paid them in gold!

Hideyoshi was now master of Japan and now free to pursue other aims. He built Osaka Castle on the site of the old Ikko fortress of Ishiyama Hongan-ji. He also organised the most important social change to take place in Japan: "The Great Sword Hunt", which started in 1588. Simply, all weapons in the hands of the peasantry were taken away and melted down for use in the construction of Hideyoshi’s Great Buddha. The only people who would be allowed to carry weapons from now on would be warriors, and the social distinctions between unarmed peasants, ashigaru soldiers and samurai — who could carry two swords –- now became a fixed feature of the social landscape.

The Final Struggle

"Those whose words are humble while they increase war preparations are going to attack. Those whose words are strong and who advance aggressively are going to retreat."

— Sun Tzu, The Art of War

In 1598, Hideyoshi was dying, but he had enough of his old political skill left to appoint five regents to rule in his infant son’s name. Toyotomu Hideyori was only five years old when his father’s appointees took over. Of these, the most important was Tokugawa Ieyasu, now staggeringly rich by any standards: his revenue from his lands was 2,557,000 koku — a koku being the quantity of rice needed to feed one man for one year. And this, remember, was his revenue, not the value of his domains. The others were Ukita Hideie, Maeda Toshiie, Mori Terumoto and Uesugi Kagaktasu. These were the most important daimyo in Japan, and Hideyoshi obviously wanted them united behind his clan.

"Speed is not a part of the true Way of strategy. Speed implies that things seem fast or slow, according to whether or not they are in rhythm. Whatever the Way, the master of strategy does not appear fast."

— Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings, The Fire Book

Ieyasu had other plans, but the opposition to him came from a courtier outside the regency, a civil servant called Ishida Mitsunari. On the other hand, Ieyasu had no desire to be seen as the one starting any war, so he did little other than wait for Ishida Mitsunari to make the first move. In the meantime, the "significant players" declared for one side or another. Fortunately for Ieyasu, most of Hideyohsi’s old supporters chose him as the natural military successor. He also had one other piece of luck. In 1600, he met the first Englishman to arrive in Japan, Will Adams. While Mr Adams was interesting enough, his cargo of guns, ammunition and good quality European powder was far more useful. Ieyasu made sure the whole lot found its way into his armoury.

Ishida’s followers — usually referred to as the Western Army — eventually made their move. Unfortunately for them, the Tokugawa — Eastern — garrison of Fushimi Castle proved to be incredibly stubborn and tied them down for too long. When the defenders were down to their last two hundred men, they opened the gates and repeatedly charged the Western Army! Although killed to the last man, they bought enough time for Ieyasu to move against Ishida’s army. The two sides met, or almost blundered into each other in the fog, at a narrow pass at Sekigahara on 21 October 1600, in damp and miserable conditions. Both armies were soaked through and neither side could see the other because of dense fog. In the early part of the day, however, the fog lift and the battle commenced as one huge, mud-soaked brawl. The Western Army, however, had never been a united force, and once battle was joined, Kobayakawa Hideaki made no effort to move against the Eastern army. When he did move, it was against his own side.

"When the terrain has impassable ravines, natural enclosures, prisons, pitfalls and clefts, you should leave quickly and not get near them. For myself, I keep away from them, so that the enemy is near them. I keep my face to these so that the enemy has his back to them."

— Sun Tzu, The Art of War

By mid-afternoon, Ieyasu was again counting the heads of his defeated enemies. Although he hadn’t secured a total victory over every opponent, he must have been rather pleased with the haul. Ishida’s challenge was over. The daimyo that survived — and had sense enough to submit — prospered or suffered in direct relationship to their allegiances at the battle. From this day on, Tokugawa Ieyasu must have known that he would be the undisputed ruler of Japan.

In 1603, he was declared Shogun, the title having been unused for nearly 30 years after the removal of Yoshiaki, the last of the Ashikaga clan. There was still one opponent to deal with. Toyotomi Hideyori was still alive and scheming. Ieyasu chose to wait and had the sense to concentrate on good government over the next 14 years, until the chance came to deal with this last enemy. When the excuse came — an implied insult — it was a little feeble, but good enough. After a long and inconclusive siege at Osaka Castle, Hideyori’s troops marched out to meet the Tokugawa army. Hideyori’s troops fought with brave desperation, while the Tokugawa army showed that it had become "stale" over the years. It won, but without any real elan. The wars for control of Japan were, however, finally at an end. No future rebellion would be tolerated and the last of the Toyotomi, Hideyori’s eight-year-old son, was put to the sword.

Ieyasu had his final victory in 1615, but he didn’t have much time to savour it. Within a year he was dead, his remarkable constitution having failed to fight off stomach cancer (as far as modern diagnosis can tell from this distance in time). But his passing was not marked by war, assassination and fevered plotting among his retainers. His son, Hidetada, quietly took control of the government and became the second Tokugawa shogun. Ieyasu achieved a kind of immortality, because he was deified as To-sho-gu, the Sun God of the East.

The Last Shogunate  

"Those who are first on the battlefield and await their enemies are at ease. Those who are last on the field and head into battle become worn out. Therefore, wise warriors cause the enemy to come to them and do not go to others."

— Sun Tzu, The Art of War

The Tokugawa shoguns remained the undisputed masters of Japan for the next 250 years. The Emperors remained shadowy god-like figures insulated from real power. Meanwhile, the Tokugawas made sure that Japan remained equally insulated from the world outside. Even before the final victory at Osaka, the Tokugawa had turned against foreigners. Christians were officially persecuted from 1612 onwards, the Spanish were refused permission to land in Japan after 1624, and in the next ten years the Japanese themselves were increasingly forbidden to travel. Japan was to be sealed off, other than for limited contacts with small Dutch trading missions. The shoguns were largely successful in their isolationism until 1853, when the arrival of a US Navy detachment under Commodore Perry — and the threat of being incorporated into one of the expanding European empires — forced home the idea that isolation as the only policy was no longer workable. Japan had been left behind, a feudal backwater in the newly modern, industrial, Victorian world.

In the face of these unwelcome facts, the clans remained fiercely xenophobic and organised attacks on foreigners in Japan, which in turn weakened the position of the Tokugawa shogun, who could no longer control them. The Meiji Restoration that came in 1867 didn’t bring back the Emperors (naturally, they had never disappeared), but it did restore power to the Imperial family and lead to the end of the shogunate (Gensai Kawakami, or Himura Kenshin, as named in the story, was the hitokiri that helped brought the Meiji Restoration). The clans were disarmed and their fiefdoms were taken away over the next decade.

The new Imperial government set out to make Japan a modern nation. In this, they were partly driven by the quite legitimate fear of ending up as just another European colony in the Far East. In the space of 50 years, Japan changed from a medieval society to a modern industrial nation: no other country has ever changed so dramatically in such a short space of time. With the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5, the Japanese proved that their transformation was complete when they defeated the Russian Empire on both land and sea. Both the Imperial Army and Navy proved that they were modern, forward-looking and equal to anything from Europe.

It hadn’t been an easy transition, though. The "last hurrah" of the old samurai order came with the Satsuma Rebellion in 1877 led by Saigo Takamori. A medieval samurai army fought against a modern conscript army and was convincingly beaten. At the last, samurai bravery alone hadn’t been enough to halt the future and Takamori took his own life in the traditional fashion.

Ironically, it was in the Imperial Japanese Army that broke the samurai rebels where the spirit of the samurai was to live on…

The Daimyo

"Leadership is a matter of intelligence, trustworthiness, justice, courage and authority."

— Sun Tzu, The Art of War

It’s traditional for Japanese names to be given as the family name first, followed by the individual’s given name, so Tokugawa Ieyasu is actually "Ieyasu of the family/clan of Tokugawa". By and large, family and clan loyalties were the most important relationships between the "big players" in this period of Japanese history, which makes it slightly easier to keep track of the different factions. If people share the same family name, they’re generally on the same side. As we’ve seen, this doesn’t stop some daimyo and samurai plotting against their overlords, relatives and friends as well as everyone else, of course!

The daimyo warlords are well established in their home fiefdoms, and each has a realistic expectation of success in the war to come. All the clans have a reasonably equal chance of being the next shogunal family at the start of play. There are many candidates who could become Shogun, but only if they have the skill to succeed in war and the will to prevail over their enemies!

"If you do not know the plans of your competitors, you cannot make informed alliances."

— Sun Tzu, The Art of War

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