In 1615 Japanese warlord Tokugawa Ieyasu surveyed his last battlefield, the blood-soaked ground of Tennoji near Osaka. He’d seen much conflict across the width and breadth of the empire, but at age 72 his work was done. All of Japan had been brought under consolidated military rule—his rule, a fact made clear to all when the emperor named him shogun, meaning roughly “barbarian-quelling generalissimo.”
Yet Ieyasu hadn’t reached this peak by himself. The foundation for a unified Japan had been laid by his peers Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi. That Ieyasu not only knew but also fought both against and alongside his predecessors makes the story of Japan’s bloody unification unique in the annals of military history.
Nobunaga was a minor daimyo (feudal lord) when he embarked on his own path to greatness. Born within the precincts of Nagoya in 1534, he wrested leadership of the Oda clan when his father died in 1551. Through a series of campaigns concluding in 1559 he established control of Owari Province, the heavily fortified, rice-rich base of operations for all that followed.
The most powerful daimyo in all Japan, Nobunaga inevitably clashed with contemporary rivals
Gauging the Oda clan weakened by the effort, the neighboring Imagawa clan struck, capturing castles at Washizu and Marune on the periphery of Nobunaga’s territory. With the visionary goal of seizing the imperial seat of power at Kyoto and declaring himself , Imagawa Yoshimoto marched at the head of 25,000 men. While the Imagawa army rested in a distant gorge, Nobunaga force marched 3,000 Oda warriors into position and ambushed the far larger enemy force in a legendary victory that boosted his and his clan’s prestige. (Japan’s hereditary military nobility) flocked to his banner. Among them was an ambitious peasant named Kinoshita Tokichiro, who was destined for things far greater than
