Oda Nobunaga

Oda Nobunaga was a Japanese daimyō who began the political and military unification of Japan during the Sengoku period. From his base in Owari he defeated larger rivals, entered Kyoto in 1568 and eventually destroyed the political authority of the Ashikaga shogunate.

Nobunaga combined aggressive campaigning with the effective use of firearms, castle building and policies that weakened some traditional economic and religious powers. In 1582 his retainer Akechi Mitsuhide rebelled at Honnō-ji in Kyoto, where Nobunaga died before completing the unification later achieved by Toyotomi Hideyoshi.

In John Man’s Ninja, the unification campaigns of Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu reduced the independent military role of ninja communities, but their reputation continued to evolve in manuals, theatre, fiction and film. Man follows that reinvention into the modern age and closes with Hiroo Onoda, whose decades-long survival in the Philippines became a very different expression of secrecy, endurance and absolute commitment. In Eiji Yoshikawa’s Taiko, born into poverty as Hiyoshi, the future Toyotomi Hideyoshi uses energy, intelligence and an instinct for people to rise through the armies of Oda Nobunaga.