Background
Mitsuhide Akechi was born on 10 March 1528 in Gifu. His common name was Jubei.
明智 光秀
Mitsuhide Akechi was born on 10 March 1528 in Gifu. His common name was Jubei.
In 1568, when Nobunaga and his forces entered Kyoto, he and Murai Sadakatsu were charged with maintaining order among the populace. In 1575 Nobunaga bestowed on him the surname Koreto, and he came to be known as Koreto Hyuga-no-kami. The following year, he joined Araki Murashige in attacking Ishiyama Castle in Settsu, a stronghold of the followers of the Pure Land sect of Buddhism in what is now the city of Osaka.
In 1577, he and T. akikawa Kazuinasu attacked another defiant group of Pure Land believers at Saiga in the province of Kii. Later, he was ordered by Nobunaga to besiege Hatano Hideharu at his castle in Yakami in Tamba. In order to bring about a peaceful settlement, he handed over his own mother as a hostage to Hideharu, meanwhile persuading Hideharu to submit and allow himself to be taken to Nobunaga’s castle in Azuchi. Nobunaga thereupon had Hideharu put to death, and Hideharu’s vassals retaliated by putting Mitsuhide’s mother to death, a move that was said to have caused Mitsuhide to hate Nobunaga.
In 1582, Tokugawa Ieyasu, another powerful military leader, was visiting Nobunaga at his castle in Azuchi, and Mitsuhide was ordered to take charge of his entertainment. Meanwhile, another of Nobu- naga’s subordinates, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who was besieging the castle of Takamatsu in Bitchu, asked Nobunaga for reinforcements. Nobunaga ordered Mitsuhide to dispense with the entertaining of Tokugawa Ieyasu and to go to the assistance of Hideyoshi. Instead of doing so, however, Mitsuhide turned against Nobunaga and, in the summer of the same year, attacked him at his headquarters in the Honno-ji temple in Kyoto, forcing him to commit suicide. He in turn was attacked and defeated by Hideyoshi at Oyama Castle in Yamazaki southwest of Kyoto. He fled in the direction of his stronghold in Sakamoto in Omi, but was mobbed and killed by villagers at Okurisu on the way.