Nobunaga Oda was a powerful military leader of the late Muromachi-Momoyama periods; he played a large role in helping to unify Japan after the decades of civil strife that had troubled it and in opening the way for the modern era.
Background
Nobunaga Oda was born on 23 June 1534 in Nagoya. He was the second son of Oda Nobuhide, a member of the Oda family, who were lords of Nagoya Castle in the province of Owari, present-day Aichi Prefecture; in childhood he went by the name Kichihoshi.
Career
In 1546 he underwent his coming-of-age ceremony, and the following year took part in his first military engagement. His father died in 1551, and at the age of seventeen he succeeded him, but in 1555 seized the castle of Kiyosu in the same province and transferred his residence there. In 1559 he attacked Iwakura, another castle in Owari Province, and thus succeeded in gaining control of the western part of the province.
In 1560, when Imagawa Yoshimoto, a military leader with his base in Suruga Province to the east, led a large army in an invasion of Owari, Nobunaga defeated him in a surprise attack at Okehazama, gaining wide renown for his daring and skill in battle. He then launched an attack on Saito Tatsuoki, one of the lords of the province of Mino to the west, seizing the castle of Inokuchi and, after renaming it Gifu, made it his new residence. In 1568 he gained control of the province of Omi and escorted Ashikaga Yoshi- aki into Kyoto, where Yoshiaki became the fifteenth and last of the Ashikaga shoguns. In 1570 he attacked the combined armies of Asai Nagamasa of Omi and Asakura Toshikage of Echizen, inflicting a decisive defeat on them at Anegawa in Omi through the use of firearms, which had recently been introduced to Japan from the West. The following year he made a fierce attack on the Buddhist monks of the Tendai sect, who had their headquarters on Mt. Hiei and had allied themselves with his enemies of the Asai and Asakura clans, burning down all the temples on the mountain and breaking the power of the sect. In 1575 he engaged the forces of Takeda Katsuyori, a powerful military leader of the province of Kai, in the battle of Nagashino in Mikawa Province, allying himself with Tokugawa Ieyasu, a leader of Mikawa. The battle, which ended in defeat for Takeda's forces, is noteworthy as the earliest encounter in which firearms were used on a large scale in open warfare.
In 1576 he constructed a magnificent castle at Azuchi on the cast shore of Lake Biwa, from which he planned to exercise domination over the entire country. In 1580 he conducted a successful campaign in Osaka against the Ishiyama Hongan-ji, the headquarters of the Shin sect of Buddhism, which was responsible for leading numerous ikko ikki (peasant uprisings) in the Kinki and Hokuriku regions. In 1582 he joined with his ally Tokugawa Ieyasu in invading the province of Kai and wiping out the forces of Takeda Katsuyori. He then set off in the same year for western Japan, intending to assist his subordinate Hashiba Hideyoshi, who was besieging the castle of Takamatsu in Bitchii, one of the castles belonging to the powerful leader Mori Terumoto. While staying at the Honno-ji in Kyoto, however, he was surrounded and attacked by a large force led by one of his own generals, Akechi Mitsuhidc, and was driven to commit suicide at the age of forty- eight.