Oda Nobunaga
Oda NobunagaOda Nobunaga played a major role in the unification of Japan after the Warring States period (Sengoku jidai). He was actually the first of the three great "unifiers" of Japan. The other two were Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu who followed in Nobunaga's footsteps. At the time of his advent to power, Japan was in a state of disarray. The Sengoku period began in 1467 with the Ashikaga family in power. With the rise in disputes between powerful military houses, the family soon found themselves powerless to maintain control or peace among the country as war after war broke out. During this period no central government existed and politically, everything had become disorganized. The only thing that seemed to be intact was the culture. Throughout this confusing period, culture continued to grow and flourish. Underneath all the chaos, two young men, Nobunaga and Hideyoshi rose to political control. This marked the end of the hundred years of conflict and the Azuchi-Momoyama period began in 1568.
Oda Nobunaga was not all glamorous and powerful from the start. He was born in 1934 in Nagoya into an obscure family. His family was a sublineage of a deputy military governor (shugodai) house in Owari Province since about 1400. Though his father Nobuhide was a vassal of the Kiyosu branch of the Oda, he was actually a sengoku daimyo. The Oda were shugodai of Owari's lower four districts. As the lord of Nagoya Castle, he had the power to compete with daimyo of neighboring provinces. He made peace with Saito Dosan (neighboring daimyo) by marrying Nobunaga to Dosan's daughter. Nobuhide's abrupt death from a disease in 1551 left Nobunaga to fill his shoes at the age of seventeen. At his father's funeral, he grabbed a handful of incense and threw it at the mortuary tablet. This kind of strange behavior earned him a reputation as a "great idiot" (outsuke) and worried many people of his future. Already, Imagawa Yoshimoto of Mikawa, Totomi, and Suruga had made inroads into Chita District from the East. From the West, Hattori Sakyo, the leader of the powerful Buddhist Jodo Shin Sect (True Pure Land sect) had invaded much of the Ama District. The other two lower districts of Owari were in havoc. Nobunaga was off to a slow start.
He spent most of the 1550's reclaiming his possessions. In 1555, Nobunaga, with the help of his uncle Oda Nobumitsu, took hold of Kiyosu and murdered the shugodai Oda Hikogoro. He moved his residence to the castle there. In 1557, he was notified that his younger brother Nobuyuki was scheming against him and had him killed. Nobunaga was a brutal warlord in this sense as well as in others. In 1559, he was successful in degrading the fortress of Iwakura (seat of the shugodai of Owari's...
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