Oda Nobunaga

Japanese general

• Born: June 1, 1534
• Birthplace: Owari Province, Japan
• Died: June 21, 1582
• Place of death: Kyoto, Japan

The greatest soldier of his time, Oda Nobunaga started a process through diplomacy and war that put an end to political fragmentation in Japan and paved the way for the unique feudal system that governed Japan during the 265-year Tokugawa period. His policies also altered the role of Buddhism in Japanese society.

Early Life

Oda Nobunaga (oh-dah noh-bew-nah-gah) lived during the Sengoku Jidai, or Warring States period, when both the shogun and the emperor were figureheads and a multitude of warlords, known as daimyo, held sway over the provinces. In addition to the secular warlords, there were militant Buddhist organizations with standing armies often allied to some of the daimyo. The country may thus be viewed as a patchwork quilt of power centers.

Oda was born in Nagoya Castle in Owari Province. His father, Oda Nobuhide, was a lower-ranked official of the Shiba family serving in Owari. Oda Nobunaga’s original name was Kichihōshi, but it was changed at age thirteen. While still a teenager, Oda began to adopt eccentric dress and behavior, which earned for him the nicknames Great Fool and Idiot. It has been suggested by some scholars that he chose to play the fool as part of a ploy for surviving the pending fratricidal struggle that ensued on the death of his father in 1551, when Oda was seventeen years old. Despite his learning to use firearms from a very early age and although much of his military reputation hinged on guns, he was alleged to have favored the spear.

Life’s Work

Among those who served the young Oda Nobunaga was his sandal-bearer Kinoshita Tokichiro, who is more popularly remembered as Toyotomi Hideyoshi and who became Oda’s most valuable military follower; ultimately Toyotomi took over the reins of power. From 1551 until 1560, Oda fought a series of campaigns to gain control of his home province of Owari. As many members of the Oda clan were reluctant to follow him because of his youth, he used a band of one thousand low-ranking soldiers to gain a foothold in the initial period of clan infighting. In 1556, Oda managed to displace a number of his rivals in Kiyosu, which became his first “capital.” Oda’s younger brother posed a challenge when he gained support from some of his father’s retainers. The rivalry ended with the death of the younger brother. In 1560, Oda became daimyo of Owari Province.

Oda was quite adept at splitting his opponents’ defensive efforts. For example, he would try to make an alliance with daimyo whose territory bordered on that of an enemy of Oda. In that manner, the enemy was then compelled to divide his forces to deal with an attack on two fronts. One of the most expedient tools for cementing diplomatic and political alliances was the arranged marriage. Marriages were often used to facilitate alliances, but they remained fragile agreements at the best of times. Oda himself married the daughter of Saitō Dōsan, the daimyo of neighboring Mino Province, which lay between Owari and the capital. In 1556, while Oda was still trying to consolidate his own power in Owari, Saitō was killed by his son Tatsuoki, Oda’s brother-in-law. The murder gave Oda the pretext for invasion on the grounds of avenging his father-in-law’s death.

During June of 1560, Oda had a chance to prove his mettle to other daimyo. Imagawa Yoshimoto, the daimyo of Suruga, Totomi, and Mikawa Provinces, was on his way through Owari to Kyōto at the head of a vast army of twenty-five thousand. Although Oda could muster no more than eighteen hundred men, he nevertheless decided to give battle. His opportunity came when his enemy was encamped in a narrow sheltered valley. Taking advantage of a violent rainstorm, he launched a surprise attack, routing his enemy in the furious but brief Battle of Okehazama .

In contrast, the operations against Saitō Tatsuoki, for control of Mino, dragged on for years. Nevertheless, by 1564, Oda had reduced Saitō’s fortress of Inabayama, and by 1567, at the age of thirty-three, he had finally defeated Saitō. He decided to use Inabayama as his own capital and renamed it Gifu. At the same time, he adopted the motto Tenka fubu, incorporating it into his personal seal. Tenka fubu is translated variously as “the realm covered in military glory,” “the realm subjected to the military,” or “rule the realm by force.” Alarmed by Oda’s increasing strength, his enemies banded together to form an anti-Oda league. To bolster his position, Oda decided to espouse the cause of Ashikaga Yoshiaki, heir to the Ashikaga shogunate. After defeating limited opposition, Oda entered Kyōto with Ashikaga on November 9, 1568. The latter was installed as the shogun, the last of the Ashikaga line. The stormy relationship between Oda and the shogun was to last five years.

Much of Oda’s energy during the last ten years of his life was absorbed in attempts to suppress the military power of the Buddhists. Various Buddhist groups had evolved powers that paralleled those of the daimyo, and their temples became centers of political, economic, and military activity. First, Oda dealt with the Enryakuji, the temple of the Heian school on Mount Hiei, which had been labeled The Indestructible Light of the [Buddhist] Law. In 1571, Oda’s forces stormed their stronghold, and the mountainside became a killing ground as men, women, and children were slain, and the temple complex put to the torch. Between three and four thousand priests were killed; the orgy of bloodletting lasted a week.

Then Oda turned his attention to the Shinshu Buddhists (also known as Ikkō), whose sectarian strongholds were strewn across the land. Their headquarters was located at Honganji, an impregnable fortress situated on highly defensible terrain and ringed by more than fifty forts and outposts. In seeking to reduce the Honganji, Oda found that he had first to dispose of the threat of the shogun and the powerful daimyo Takeda Shingen. In July, 1574, Oda laid siege to the Ikkō stronghold of Nagashima, located on an estuary of the Kisogawa. The captive population tried to surrender but to no avail. Oda ordered the fortress to be burned to the ground, and anyone who sought to escape was shot. It is estimated that as many as twenty thousand people died inside the burning fort.

The Battle of Nagashino, against Takeda Katsuyori (Shingen’s son), in 1575, demonstrated Oda’s military insight. The battle grew out of Oda’s efforts to relieve the Siege of Nagashino Castle in Mikawa Province. The Takeda forces had surrounded the castle, which was within the territory of Oda’s trusted follower Tokugawa Ieyasu . Oda had a combined force of up to thirty-eight thousand troops, of which ten thousand were armed with matchlocks. From those troops, three thousand of the best sharpshooters were selected for deployment. The Takeda clan relied on mounted samurai, which epitomized the art of the cavalry, but Oda denied the enemy a chance to utilize his horsemen effectively. Oda’s men were arranged behind wooden barriers, or a palisade, which served to channel the Takeda attack. The lack of a single clear-cut objective meant that the horsemen had to thread their way through the deadly obstacles that concealed the sharpshooters. The peasant foot soldiers, or ashigaru, were trained to fire in ranks, which allowed a steady rate of fire as the weapons were fired and loaded in sequence.

Although the majority of sixteenth century Japanese wars were the domain of the samurai, there were also naval operations involved in Oda’s rise to power. The siege of the Honganji fortress was prolonged for years, because Kennyo Kōsa, who commanded the Honganji force, had arranged for resupply to be provided by the Mōri clan, who shipped men and supplies fromŌsaka up the Inland Sea. Oda ordered his vassal daimyo to prepare a fleet to intercept the Mōri navy. The three-hundred-ship force assembled for Oda was outnumbered by more than two to one by the Mōri vessels. The destruction of Oda’s fleet in August, 1576, compelled him to build a new navy. This naval reconstruction program resulted in the delivery of seven ironclads, complete with cannons, in July, 1578. The new navy sailed intoŌsaka and effectively cut Honganji from its supply line when it destroyed the six-hundred-vessel Mōri fleet on December 4, 1578. Despite all the time and effort to reduce the Honganji, the affair ended in a rather anticlimactic fashion, when the emperor negotiated a peace to end the Ishiyama Honganji war in 1580.

Toyotomi, who had been assigned to pacify western Japan, had become bogged down, and he was compelled to request assistance from his superior. Oda dispatched the bulk of his troops to Toyotomi’s aid. With a small band of only two hundred to three hundred men, Oda took shelter at the Honnōji temple in Kyōto before joining the main force. While there, he was attacked by thirteen thousand troops led by one of his most trusted vassal daimyo, Akechi Mitsuhide. The death of Oda on June 21, 1582, at the hands of the renegade Akechi is known as the Honnōji Incident. Toyotomi made peace with his opponents almost immediately, and thirteen days later, he avenged his master’s death by defeating Akechi at the Battle of Yamazaki. Akechi is referred to in some texts as the Thirteen Day Shogun. Toyotomi eventually prevailed as the heir to Oda’s efforts, and he also inherited the conquest of the Buddhist armies.

Significance

Despite Oda Nobunaga’s reputation as a warlord, he did make contributions to other aspects of Japanese life and culture. Oda declared a number of free trade centers, which helped to break up the economic stagnation of a tradition-bound economy. He also sought to alter the role played by guilds in market centers. There was no blanket policy but rather a series of adjustments made to derive greater economic benefit. In some cases, guilds were abolished, while in other circumstances they were established. Oda also sought to modernize the economy by banning barter trade and replacing it with currency exchange to promote a true money economy. To prevent unfair practice, he also established currency regulations that set official standards for exchange and for the value of copper, silver, and gold. Oda took steps to simplify land ownership and encourage single-party control of estates. That went hand in hand with his implementation of cadastral surveys, which were designed to expedite administration, taxation, and assessment of land productivity.

Oda’s policies had the effect of altering the role of Buddhism in Japanese society. The changes evoked include the elimination of military power, the limitation of economic power, and the subjugation of religious authorities to the central administration. Despite the tremendous amount of energy and resources expended against the Buddhists, Oda was not anti-Buddhist. Oda patronized certain temples, had Buddhist military allies, and had even relied on Zen priests as military advisers on occasion.

The Sengoku period was dominated by a warlord society, and even Oda’s followers feuded. On occasion, there was treachery, and Oda had to execute some of those daimyo who sought to betray him. Yet such action was not particularly abnormal in a warlord society. That Oda indulged in such behavior did not prove that he was more bloodthirsty than any other daimyo. Oda was responsible for the initial military operations that altered the balance of power and led to the centralization of power in Japan. Eventually, the process culminated in the Tokugawa shogunate (1602-1867), followed by a period of Japanese modernization known as the Meiji Restoration.

Bibliography

Hall, John Whitney. Government and Local Power in Japan, 500 to 1700: A Study Based on the Bizen Province. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1966. This study focuses on Bizen Province, yet chapter 10 has relevant information on Oda. This book establishes Oda’s efforts within the realm of the evolving political scene and is useful as a brief overview for those new to the subject.

Hall, John Whitney, Nagahara Keiji, and Kozo Yamamura, eds. Japan Before Tokugawa: Political Consolidation in Economic Growth, 1500 to 1600. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1981. Although the entire volume is worthwhile from the standpoint of historical context, one chapter is of special interest: chapter 5, “The Political Posture of Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi.” The work focuses on the nonmilitary side of the warlord.

Lamers, Jeroen P. Japonius Tyrannus: The Japanese Warlord, Oda Nobunaga Reconsidered. Leiden, the Netherlands: Hotei, 2000. The first modern biography of Oda in English, which seeks to provide a comprehensive chronology of his political and military career. Includes illustrations, maps, bibliographic references, and index.

McMullin, Neil. Buddhism and the State in Sixteenth Century Japan. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984. An advanced examination of the relationship between Oda and the Buddhists. Despite the omission of Oda’s name from the title, the work is to a large degree centered on him. This volume uses by far the greatest number of original documents from which to draw information. Central to the thesis is the concept that Oda does not deserve the heinous reputation he has received.

Perrin, Noel. Giving Up the Gun: Japan’s Reversion to the Sword, 1543-1879. Boston: David R. Godine, 1979. Primarily concerned with Japan’s adoption and then later rejection of firearms. Although the chapters concerning Oda are few, this book is excellent for those seeking to understand the cultural implications of Oda’s use of firearms. The author also used a number of historic Japanese texts for his research, so his bibliography is noteworthy for those studying the history of technology.

Sansom, George. A History of Japan, 1334-1615. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1961. Still one of the standard works in the field. The chapters devoted to Oda are 17, 18, and 19. The author, however, remains firm in his conviction that Oda was a brute. An effective balance between chronology and analysis.

Sato, Hiroaki. Legends of the Samurai. Woodstock, N.Y.: Overlook Press, 1995. Oda is one of the warlords covered in this survey of famous samurai and other warriors of Japan. Includes illustrations, maps, bibliographic references, and index.

Souyri, Pierre. The World Turned Upside Down: Medieval Japanese Society. Translated by Käthe Roth. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001. This history of medieval Japan culminates in Oda’s unification and transformation of Japanese society. Includes maps, bibliographic references, and index.

Turnbull, Stephen. Samurai Warriors. London: Blandford Press, 1987. Chapter 5 is the most relevant. A study of Oda the warlord, with an emphasis on military achievements, and the chronology of battles, combined with technical information. The illustrations serve to make this the most colorful of the works listed.