The Opponents
WITH HIS HOME PROVINCE and his own family finally under his control, Oda Nobunaga began to expand his horizons. Whether he intended from this early stage to actually try to unify Japan is debatable, but he knew that any sort of personal advancement had to have the blessing of the shogun in Kyoto. The position of shogun had long been contested by descendants of the Muromachi bakufu (ruling family), a contest that had been a major factor in bringing on the Onin War in 1467, but by 1477 they had become irrelevant, with the shogun rendered almost powerless.22 Ashikaga Yoshiteru, shogun in the mid-1500s, had been unable to occupy his own palace owing to the fact that Miyoshi Nagayoshi, the daimyo of Omi Province (where Kyoto was located) had not allowed it. This was one of the overriding contradictions of Japan at the time: the shogun was virtually powerless though the supposed military leader under the auspices of the emperor, but at the same time, as a figurehead he commanded “A strange respect” from the daimyo.23 Gaining the support of the shogun was therefore the way to gain friends and destroy enemies, something of a royal road. In spite of the lack of respect paid to the sovereign in those days, a blessing from the throne was essential to an aspiring leader.24
While Nobunaga needed the shogun, Ashikaga Yoshiteru likewise needed him. Yoshiteru wanted to play a more active role than he was able to, so he appointed Nobunaga as military governor, or shugo, in Owari Province.25 The shogun had to walk a fine line between appointing an overly aggressive daimyo who would try to seize control and one he could control but who might be insufficiently powerful to protect him. For a daimyo to aim for dominance he had to be able to safeguard the shogun, which meant controlling Kyoto. Any attempt to do so, however, would provoke moves by the other daimyo either to stop such a move directly or to attack the home province of the first daimyo. During the first half of the sixteenth century, these daimyo were so busy fighting each other there was no real chance of national progress.26
Given the constant threat of aggressive neighbors, dependable allies were as vital as dependable troops. Often alliances were negotiated and sealed by marriages, as was indicated earlier by Nobunaga’s marriage to the daughter of Saito Dosan. Later, Nobunaga would actively arrange alliances by this method, betrothing sons and daughters to allies as necessary. Other times these were voluntary, including the most important of Nobunaga’s alliances, that with Tokugawa Ieyasu. Once a hostage to a rival daimyo to secure his father’s cooperation in a campaign, Tokugawa, upon taking over his own clan, tied his fortunes to that of the Odas. It proved a mutually beneficial arrangement: Tokugawa proved to be a trusted and at times vitally important subordinate in battle, but he also used the military power that he accumulated to make himself shogun in the early 1600s.
Another factor in the Sengoku period was a religious movement established in the early 1200s that became a factor by the later fifteenth century, led by the monks of the Buddhist Jodo Shinshu or “True Pure Land” sect. They began to assert political power by uniting farmers, monks, and priests in armed bands known as ikki. Through acts of resistance and rebellion they came to challenge the rule of the daimyo in several provinces.27 The most powerful Pure Land group was the Ikko-ikki, or Single-minded League, established by Rennyo. Although not interested in political power as such, the Ikko-ikki rejected control by outside authorities. Their claim on the souls of peasants and samurai meant potentially divided loyalties when the daimyo needed taxes and military service.
Nobunaga would be obliged to deal with the Ikko-ikki in the future, but his initial concern was with rival daimyo. He had the shogun’s favor, but was he strong enough to be the protector, much less a national unifier?
The Battle of Okehazama
BY 1559, ODA NOBUNAGA had secured control over his home province of Owari, and he had a favorable visit with the shogun that same year. However, he was still a minor player and was soon targeted by a more powerful daimyo with designs on Kyoto and the shogun: Imagawa Yoshimoto of Suruga Province, some one hundred miles to the east of Nobunaga. Although Imagawa had only on-again, off-again alliances with his eastern neighbors (primarily Takeda Singen of Kai), the other daimyo to his north and east were so involved in their own fighting that he thought it safe to make a move toward Kyoto in 1560. Over the previous two decades he had risen from the position of third son and monk-in-training to become ally (through marriage) to the powerful Takeda clan and master of not only his own province but also of Totomi and Mikawa. So with large land holdings and the powerful Takedas to cover his rear, Imagawa prepared to brush aside the upstart Oda Nobunaga and march on the shogun’s domain.
Imagawa reached the border of Owari in mid-June, immediately launching attacks on Nobunaga’s two forts along the coastal Tokaido road: Washizu and Marune. The attack against Marune was led by nineteen-year-old Tokugawa Ieyasu, daimyo of Mikawa Province and at this time a vassal to Imagawa. After capturing the castle, Tokugawa was given permission to stay behind and garrison the frontier fort at Otaka while the rest of the Imagawa army pressed forward.
When Oda, in his headquarters at Kiyusu, was informed of the invasion and attack on the two forts, he sent orders for the commanders to hold as long as possible. Two versions exist of the council meeting he held that evening. One is that he listened to recommendations from his senior advisors to stand fast and defend Kiyusu. The other version is that when news came of the loss of the two forts he brushed it off. In his book on samurai legends, Hiroaki Sato describes the scene: “His conversations that night contained nothing remotely related to military matters, as they consisted of social gossip. When he found it was very late, he gave his men leave to go home. His house administrators derided him among themselves, saying, ‘Well, the adage, “When luck runs out, the mirror of one’s wisdom clouds up, too,” is certainly meant for this kind of behavior.’”28 When news came the following morning, 22 June, of the advance of Imagawa’s army, his response was much different. He had been up since dawn, and now supposedly he chanted a line from a Noh play: “Man’s life is fifty years. In the Universe what is it but dream and illusion? Is there any who is born and does not die?” He then ate breakfast as he donned his armor.29 He rode out of Kiyusu with only half a dozen retainers, but the rest of his officers gathered their men and caught up.
Oda’s first stop was Zensho Temple, very near where Imagawa had established his camp at Dengaku-hazama, near the village of Okehazama. This was an area with which he had been familiar since childhood. Hazama means gorge or defile; thus Imagawa had picked a camp in a seemingly good defensive position, but without room to maneuver.30 Oda set up his camp with banners flying within sight of Imagawa’s position. Leaving a number of men to give the look of busy preparation, Oda led his men around the flank by way of Nakajima, overruling protests from his subordinates that the route went through rice paddies, which would force them to advance in single file. At this point his force numbered somewhere between 2,000 and 3,000. During Oda’s maneuver a small force of 300 cavalry struck Imagawa’s camp from Zensho and was easily driven off with a loss of 50 men. The unsuccessful assault further contributed to Imagawa’s conviction that the Oda force could do him little harm. Imagawa saw this as a sign of divine protection, assuring him that nothing could withstand his power. He had songs sung in leisurely fashion as he continued to lay out his camp.31 Local peasants and priests brought him and his men food and drink. Imagawa himself was enjoying a head-viewing ceremony, the objects of his appraisal sent to him by Tokugawa from the victory at Marune.
Oda at this point prepared to attack, again provoking protests from his officers. He silenced them by arguing that the Imagawa forces were tired after their march and battles and that they would be resting before continuing their march. Thus, they would be unready for an attack. (Unbeknownst to Nobunaga, the forces that had taken the castles were those of Tokugawa, who was far to the east; the army before him was rested and ready.) Oda told his men that speed was of the essence, instructing them to hit hard and fast, create panic, and not stop the p
ursuit for prisoners. As if to belie Imagawa’s assumption of divine favor, a furious hailstorm struck just as Oda’s men were positioning themselves for the attack. The storm abated at about 2 p.m. and Oda immediately ordered the charge. Nobunaga’s orders had been to advance if the enemy retreated, but to fall back if the enemy rallied and attacked. There was no rally; Imagawa’s first line of defense was immediately shattered.32
Nobunaga’s men were on the enemy before they had even emerged from whatever shelter they had taken from the storm. This was no time for muskets, but hand-to-hand fighting with spears and swords. As the two armies began the engagement, Imagawa was still wrapped in his sense of security. Indeed, he thought the noise of the attack, at first, was merely a quarrel among his own men. He shouted to a passing soldier for silence, but the soldier proved to be one of Nobunaga’s men, who killed him.33 Nobunaga dismounted and fought alongside his men on foot. He hoped to fight Imagawa himself, but such was not to be. It mattered little, for the battle was over in minutes and the pursuit resulted in 2,500–3,000 enemy dead. Oda’s casualties are not recorded but must have been negligible.
The battle at Okehazama was a meeting engagement dependent on surprise. It began with a feint and demonstration when Oda fixed Imaga-wa’s attention by establishing his camp and launching a small cavalry attack from it. That, coupled with Imagawa’s false sense of security, concentrated the enemy in their own camp located in a gorge. This was a poor decision on Imagawa’s part, but he seems to have assumed that the steep hills on either side would offer protection, rather than bottle him up. Oda controlled the tempo of the battle, launching his attack rapidly in the wake of the hailstorm before the enemy could collect themselves. Carrying out an attack on an enemy force some ten times one’s own size certainly indicates Oda’s audacity. The pursuit was planned from the beginning and carried out to the utmost. The surprise, along with the death of their commander, immediately dispirited the Imagawa force, and they fled after putting up minimal resistance. Although the bulk of the force escaped death or capture, their complete dispersal was sufficient to make this an overwhelming victory.
Jeremy Black argues that the victory was more the seizure of an opportunity than a deliberate attack: “Nobunaga, who received good intelligence reports and was always aware of the enemy’s position and actions, was feeling his way toward [Imagawa] Yoshimoto, brushing aside the Imagawa advance forces and presumably hoping to pressurize the main Imagawa army into withdrawing from Owari.”34 Oda did not maneuver them into the gorge nor could he have anticipated the storm, but the ability to read and react is one of the characteristics of the great battlefield general. Black’s argument that this was not a strategically planned attack is valid, but from the sources it cannot be doubted that Oda marched out of Kiyusu looking for a battle, not merely to “pressure” Imagawa away.
The battle at Okehazama also had great political ramifications. The vassal Tokugawa Ieyasu had done nothing to aid or avenge Imagawa and carefully made no move to antagonize Oda. He would soon join his forces and the resources of his province of Mikawa to Oda’s cause and prove to be not only an invaluable ally and battlefield subordinate, but an able heir to Oda Nobunaga’s goal of unifying Japan. With Tokugawa on his side and the Imagawa clan in rapid decline, his eastern flank was secure; Oda could continue his drive to pacify territory to the north.
Although allied to the daimyo of Mino by marriage, Nobunaga’s father-in-law Saito Dosan was murdered in 1566 by the daimyo’s son. This motivated Nobunaga into action. With the able assistance of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, a foot soldier turned general who had risen through the ranks under Nobunaga’s tutelage, Nobunaga built a castle-fort at Sunomata at a river junction on the Owari-Mino border. This dominated the plain of Mino and gave Oda a strong position from which to launch an assault that quickly carried his enemy’s castle at Inabayama.
With Mino Province in his control in 1567, Oda established himself at Gifu (formerly Inabayama). Here he received word from the heir to the shogunate, Yoshiaki, who was exiled from the palace. The shogun praised his achievements and asked for aid in recovering territory his family had lost to rebellious vassals and in restoring the vacant throne. These two requests formed the authority for Nobunaga’s further action. His motto, engraved on his seal, became “Rule the Empire by Force.”35 Rival daimyo in Ise and Omi tried to interfere, but by late 1568 Nobunaga had defeated their armies and, with Yoshiaki in hand, entered the capital city of Kyoto, where Yoshiaki was restored to his position on 28 December. Despite their initial alliance, the relations between the two deteriorated as time went by, with Nobunaga respecting the office of the shogun but not the person. He built a massive new palace for Yoshiaki while demanding he submit to terms that would reduce him to ceremonial status. Yohsiaki instead courted support from other daimyo while carefully not offending Nobunaga too greatly.
At the end of July 1570 Nobunaga and Tokugawa Ieyasu fought the daimyo of the provinces of Echizen and Omi, Asakura Yoshikage and Asai Nagamasa. Asai was Nobunaga’s brother-in-law, but had long-standing ties to Asakura. The battle took place at Anegawa and was a traditional hand-to-hand battle, much of it fought in a shallow river. Although he outnumbered his opponents, Nobunaga needed Ieyasu to deliver a well-timed flank attack in order to save the day. Asakura and Asai were badly hurt but not eliminated as a threat.
The Ikko-ikki
WITH HIS FRONTIERS RELATIVELY SECURE, Oda Nobunaga prepared for a threat much closer to home: the Ikko-ikki. These religious communities comprised new-style warrior monks of the Shinshu sect. Turnbull explains, “The second term in the name, ikki, strictly means league. … The other word, Ikko, provides a clue to their religious affiliation. It means ‘single-minded’ or ‘devoted,’ and the monto (disciples or adherents of the Shinshu sect) were completely single-minded in their devotion and determination.”36 The Ikko-ikki grew out of the Onin War and out of the tradition of earlier warrior-monk sects. Whereas earlier sects had some trained fighters, they depended mainly on mercenaries; the Ikko-ikki recruited from the peasantry and depended on fanaticism. The Shinshu sect grew out of a breakaway movement from Pure Land Buddhism and was organized in the first half of the fourteenth century by Kakunyo, grandson of the Pure Land sect’s founder, Shinran. He established the movement’s headquarters at the temple holding his grandfather’s ashes, Honganji.
The Shinshu sect turned away from traditional monasticism taught by other forms of Buddhism in order to preach that enlightenment came merely from uttering the name of Amida Buddha, for it grew from an inner urge placed there by Amida. This simpler form of enlightenment was attractive to the peasantry, who had neither the time nor spiritual drive to become monks. The Ikko-ikki communities were started by Rennyo, the eighth leader of the Honganji, at the end of the fifteenth century. Turnbull writes, “Their faith promising that paradise was the immediate reward for death in battle, the Ikko-ikki monto (believers) welcomed fighting; nothing daunted them. When the Ikko-ikki were about to go into battle, the sound of their massed nembutsu chanting chilled the blood of their enemies.”37 By Oda Nobunaga’s time the Ikko-ikki were established in an area virtually equivalent in size to his own, and they were an opposing economic force as well as a military one. Further, when relations between Nobunaga and the shogun went sour, Yoshiaki began courting the Ikko-ikki as well as some of the daimyo. Clearly, the warrior monks and the new militant church, the Honganji, would have to be dealt with if Nobunaga was going to establish his dominion.38
The Ikko-ikki were based in temples throughout the region from Kyoto westward, but their three primary centers were at Enryakuji just to the north of Kyoto, Ishiyama Hongonji further to the south (the site of Osaka Castle today), and Nagashima some fifty miles east in the province of Ise, next to its border with Oda’s Owari Province. All were built in easily defensible areas, Ishiyama Hongonji and Nagashima in marshy river deltas and Enryakuji atop Mt. Hiei overlooking the southwestern shore of Lake Biwa.
The Ikko-ikki traditionally f
ought with a halberd-type spear, the naginata, which sported a long, wide, curved blade. By the Sengoku period, however, they had not only adopted firearms but were engaged in manufacturing them as well, using the organized and cohesive nature of the Shinshu communities.39 That same cohesiveness, coupled with discipline and motivation, allowed them to develop into masters of both offense and defense.
Oda Nobunaga began his struggles with the warrior monks in 1570. After his victory at Anegawa in midsummer, he launched an offensive into Shettsu Province, south of Kyoto, against the daimyo Miyoshi Yoshitsugu, leader of one of the clans threatening Kyoto. Miyoshi was able to draw on 3,000 arquebusiers from the nearby Ikko-ikki temple at Ishiyama Honganji, a reinforcement that obliged the Oda forces to withdraw. Turnbull asserts that “Nobunaga’s army was stunned both by the ferocity of the surprise attack against it and also by the use of controlled volley firing from 3,000 arquebusiers.”40 This is the first mention of volley musket fire in history.
When Nobunaga marched to Mt. Hiei against a reconstituted army under Asai and Asakura in the winter of 1570–71, Ikko-ikki forces surrounded and forced the surrender of Ogie Castle, commanded by one of Nobunaga’s younger brothers, who committed suicide in shame. That loss, coupled with the blame he placed on Buddhist priests for his father’s death, must have renewed Nobunaga’s personal hatred and coupled it with his political and military needs. Additionally, monks had again aided his enemies during the battle against Asai and Asakura, when 3,000 gunmen from the temple at Enryakuji struck the Oda flank.
Starting on 29 September 1571, Nobunaga moved to eradicate the league in a most brutal way. Starting with the town of Sakamoto at the foot of Mt. Hiei, Nobunaga’s army of 30,000 moved toward Enryakuji at the summit in a scorched earth advance, destroying everything in its path. The Ikko-ikki could do little against Nobunaga’s large and highly trained samurai army, which destroyed the temple at Enryakuji.41 All the sources describe it as more slaughter than battle, with every structure burned and every person—man, woman, or child—killed in battle or taken captive and beheaded.42 Nobunaga’s reputation for cruelty grew primarily from this occasion, but the action was effective. Although the temple was later rebuilt, the army of monks based there was never revived.
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