Oda Nobunaga
Oda Nobunaga broke the power of the medieval Japanese order and began the reunification that two successors completed. Born in 1534 to a minor warlord in Owari province, he was known in his youth as the fool of Owari for eccentric behaviour and disregard of etiquette; a retainer killed himself in protest at his conduct at his father's funeral. He secured his clan by defeating his own relatives, and in 1560 at Okehazama destroyed a force many times his size under Imagawa Yoshimoto by attacking a celebrating camp during a thunderstorm. He entered Kyoto in 1568 as the protector of a Ashikaga shogun, and deposed him in 1573, ending a shogunate that had lasted two centuries. His methods were ruthless and effective. He annihilated the warrior monks of Mount Hiei in 1571, burning the temple complex and killing thousands including women and children, and fought the Ikko-ikki militant Buddhist leagues for a decade, exterminating the population of Nagashima. He grasped firearms faster than his rivals. At Nagashino in 1575 he used some three thousand arquebusiers behind palisades in rotating volleys to destroy the Takeda cavalry, which had been considered unbeatable. He also restructured the economy — abolishing the guild monopolies and toll barriers that obstructed trade, standardising surveys, and separating warriors from the land by paying them stipends. He tolerated and used the Jesuits, partly as a counterweight to the Buddhist establishment. In June 1582 his general Akechi Mitsuhide turned on him at the Honno-ji temple in Kyoto. Surrounded with a few attendants, he killed himself as the building burned.
- Lived: 1534 CE – 1582 CE
- Nationality: Japanese
- Roles: ruler, military_leader
