Oda Nobunaga and the First Unification
Oda Nobunaga entered Kyoto in 1568 with a claimant to the shogunate and began the reunification of Japan. The country had been at war with itself for a century. The Ashikaga shogunate had lost authority after the Ōnin War of 1467, and some two hundred daimyo fought over the provinces in the period called Sengoku, the age of the country at war. Nobunaga held a minor domain in Owari and made his name at Okehazama in 1560, attacking a force perhaps ten times his own during a thunderstorm while it rested from the march, and killing its commander. He was invited to Kyoto by Ashikaga Yoshiaki, installed him as shogun, and deposed him five years later when he proved difficult — ending the shogunate that had lasted since 1338. His methods were the reason he won. He raised full-time infantry from peasants rather than relying on part-time warriors; he equipped them with matchlocks bought and manufactured in quantity; and at Nagashino in 1575 he put ranks of arquebusiers behind palisades and destroyed the Takeda cavalry, the finest in Japan. He also abolished toll barriers, opened free markets, standardised weights, and broke the institutions that stood outside secular authority — burning the Enryaku-ji monastery on Mount Hiei in 1571 with thousands inside, and fighting the Ikkō-ikki leagues for a decade. He was betrayed by his general Akechi Mitsuhide at Honnō-ji in 1582 and killed himself in the burning temple. Hideyoshi and then Ieyasu finished what he had started. A Japanese saying has Nobunaga pound the rice, Hideyoshi bake the cake, and Ieyasu eat it.
- Year: 1568 CE
- Category: Political
