Who was Oda Nobunaga?

He was a daimyo (1534 to 1582) who began the unification of Sengoku-era Japan, winning at Okehazama, seizing Kyoto and pioneering massed gunfire in battle.

What is Oda Nobunaga famous for?

For his victory at Okehazama, his use of matchlock volleys at Nagashino, ending the Ashikaga shogunate, and starting the unification of Japan.

How did Oda Nobunaga die?

He was betrayed in 1582 by his general Akechi Mitsuhide and surrounded at the Honno-ji temple in Kyoto, where by tradition he took his own life.

Yes; he could be merciless, notably in burning the monastery of Enryaku-ji in 1571 and in his long war against the warrior monks, alongside his reputation as a bold innovator.

Did Nobunaga unify Japan?

He began the process but did not complete it. His work was carried on by Toyotomi Hideyoshi and finished by Tokugawa Ieyasu.

What happened at Nagashino?

In 1575 Nobunaga and his ally Ieyasu used ranks of gunners behind palisades to break the Takeda cavalry, a celebrated example of firepower in Japanese warfare.

Oda Nobunaga: the first unifier of Japan

Oda Nobunaga tore up the rules of the Sengoku age, the century of warring states, and set Japan on the road to unity. Bold, innovative and often brutal, he rose from a single province to master of the capital, and his methods, from massed gunfire to the destruction of his enemies root and branch, remade Japanese warfare.

Okehazama and the road to Kyoto

Nobunaga inherited the small province of Owari and made his name in 1560 at¹ Okehazama, where he surprised and destroyed the far larger army of Imagawa Yoshimoto² in a sudden storm³. The victory announced him as a force to be reckoned with. In 1568 he marched on Kyoto and installed Ashikaga Yoshiaki as shogun, then discarded him in 1573², ending the centuries-old Ashikaga shogunate.

Colour woodblock print of samurai fighting with swords and spears in driving rain — The Battle of Okehazama in 1560, fought in a sudden downpour, in a woodblock triptych by Utagawa Toyonobu published in 1882. Public domain

Firepower at Nagashino

Nobunaga was quick to see the promise of the matchlock musket¹, newly arrived through Portuguese traders. At Nagashino in 1575 he set ranks of gunners behind wooden palisades⁴ and broke the famous cavalry of the Takeda with disciplined volleys, a battle long held up as a turning point in the age of the gun in Japan.

Hanging scroll portrait of Nobunaga seated in formal robes beneath lines of Japanese inscription — Portrait of Oda Nobunaga by Kano Soshu, painted in 1583, the year after his death, and kept at the temple of Chokoji. Public domain

Ruthless conqueror

His rise was pitiless. He burned the great monastery of Enryaku-ji on Mount Hiei in 1571², killing thousands by traditional accounts, and waged a long and merciless war against the warrior monks of the Ishiyama Hongan-ji. To his admirers he was the man who ended the chaos; to his victims he was a destroyer, and both are true.

Betrayal at Honno-ji

In 1582, with much of central Japan under his control, Nobunaga was betrayed by his own general Akechi Mitsuhide⁵ and surrounded at the temple of Honno-ji in Kyoto. He died there, by tradition taking his own life as the building burned². His work was carried on by his general Toyotomi Hideyoshi.

Colour woodblock print of a warrior in white robes wielding a spear surrounded by fire — Nobunaga fighting amid the flames at Honno-ji, a woodblock print by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi from his 1878 series A Mirror of Famous Generals of Japan. Public domain

Meet the other great commanders of feudal Japan.

Sources and notes

Numbered notes in the text point to the works below.

Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Oda Nobunaga” ↩ a b
World History Encyclopedia, “Oda Nobunaga” ↩ a b c d
Ōta Gyūichi, trans. and ed. J. S. A. Elisonas and J. P. Lamers, The Chronicle of Lord Nobunaga (Shinchō kōki) (Brill, 2011). ↩
Stephen Turnbull, Nagashino 1575: Slaughter at the Barricades (Osprey Publishing, 2000). ↩
Jeroen P. Lamers, Japonius Tyrannus: The Japanese Warlord Oda Nobunaga Reconsidered (Hotei Publishing, 2000). ↩
Wikipedia, “Oda Nobunaga, Wikipedia”