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 Biography of Oda Nobunaga
By: akusunokimasa

Pages:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7

As stated Oda Nobunaga rose into the national spotlight after his surprise victory over Imagawa Yoshimoto at Okehazama. After this Nobunaga set to work to establish his own dominance over Japan, and men of valor and worth flocked to his lands. Tokugawa Ieyasu rebelled against the Imagawa now commanded by Imagawa Ujizane, Yoshimoto’s son, and had become a power unto his own in the province of Mikawa on Owari’s eastern border. Nobunaga and Ieyasu agreed on an alliance treaty and sealed their two houses to each other, and with this the Oda’s eastern border was secured.
To the north of the Oda was the Saito clan. As mentioned earlier in regard to the Saito, Saito Dosan being the father in law of Nobunaga as mentioned earlier, had died after his adopted son had launched a coup and landed the Saito dominion into turmoil. Both Dosan and his adopted eldest son died in the struggle and Dosan’s younger son was put into power. The heir, Saito Yoshitatsu, was incompetent and as he grew spent all his time on drinking parties and women and gave no attention to military matters but such was the power of the vassals of the Saito and the ‘Three Men of Mino’, Ando Morinari, Inaba Ittetsu, and Ujiie Bokuzen, that the Saito remained a formidable force to deal with.
Nobunaga saw his opportunity to extend his territories and avenge his father-in-law and decided to wage war on the Saito clan. The Oda had tried to build a castle across the river from Mino at the place called Sunimoto but had failed under various generals who tried but had fallen under Saito attacks from across the river. Unnerved by these defeats Nobunaga gave the job of castle construction to Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who had risen even higher in rank to become a general and an official advisor, and he employed the help of some radical mountain samurai as fierce as wolves by talking to their leader, who Hideyoshi had swept the gardens of when he was young. Hideyoshi successfully got them to join him and they set to work building the castle at Sunimoto. The Saito watched but decided, over confident of their previous victories, just to let the Oda build the castle and then rush across the river and take it when they were done.
So construction moved rapidly, the spirits of the mountain samurai were high because they were building their own castle for themselves. One Saito general, Ogasawara or the 'Tiger of Unuma', was worried and asked the garrison on the Saito side of the river why they hadn't attacked and they simply laughed at him and explained why but the Tiger of Unuma wasn't sure and very angry at being laughed at. To the surprise of the Saito the castle finished construction right under their noses and when they launched an attack but the fierce mountain samurai horribly beat them back. The Saito then launched four more unsuccessful attacks without the aid of the Tiger of Unuma and finally gave up, angry and desperate. Hideyoshi had established a foothold into Mino.
Nobunaga, however, believed this would be sufficient and decided to launch an all out assault against Mino against Hideyoshi's advice and returned unsuccessful. Hideyoshi explained the defeat by saying that in the Saito clan there were three great generals called "The Three Men of Mino" and they defended Mino from any threats, instead of Yoshitatsu. Hideyoshi asked Nobunaga to wait and he would deal with ‘The Three Men of Mino’. Hideyoshi convinced the Tiger of Unuma to join the Oda forces but Nobunaga was unhappy with this because of Ogasawara’s affiliations with Dosan and wanted to kill the Tiger while he had the chance so Hideyoshi had to think quick to avoid a ‘deadly’ situation. He spoke to the Tiger and hatched a plan to lure the ‘Three Men of Mino’ over to the Oda camp in secret. The Tiger was successful and Ando Morinari, Inaba Ittetsu, and Ujiie Bokuzen came over to the Oda camp. After this was accomplished Hideyoshi deemed Mino ripe for the Oda’s taking.