The triple alliance of Takeda-Imagawa-Hojo had fallen apart by the late 1560s, Shingen decided to take the remaining Imagawa lands after his ally had been crushed by the forces of Nobunaga. This pissed off his son Takeda Yoshinobu who was married to the daughter of the late Imagawa Yoshimoto. Yoshinobu rebelled against his father and committed seppuku after his failed coup. Shingen agreed to partition the lands of the Imagawa with Tokugawa Ieyasu.
Their former ally the Hojo attempted to intervene which led to war between the Takeda and Hojo.
after Shingen broke with the Hōjō, there was an incident when the Hōjō boycotted salt supplies to Kai Province. Salt was crucial at the time in order to preserve meat.
When Kenshin heard of Shingen's problem, he sent salt to Shingen from his own province. Kenshin commented that the Hōjō had "performed a very mean act". Kenshin added, "I do not fight with salt, but with the sword”.
Shingen defeated the Hojo and secured his new gains in the former Imagawa clan.
At this point the Takeda clan was one of the most powerful in all of Japan, having taken a large portion of territory and retainers, and securing his northern flank against his great rival Uesugi Kenshin, Shingen turned his attention to the angry elephant in the room… Oda Nobunaga.
Takeda marched his forces into the Tokugawa lands who had traditionally been defending the Oda clan’s eastern flank and utterly crushed them at the battle of Mikatagahara. Tokugawa Ieyasu managed to save the day by tricking Shingen into retereating but by the next year 1573, Shingen would return with a formidable army of 30,000 meant to face the great Daimyo lord Oda Nobunaga.
However, right as his grand campaign to Kyoto began Shingen besieged Noda castle in Tokugawa lands.
Shingen wanted to understand the level of morale in the besieged castle so rather astutely he came up with a plan,
The castle had a lone flute player who could be heard playing every evening. Shingen reasoned that he could determine the moral level of the defenders by assessing the quality of the flute music
In the evening and under cover of darkness, Shingen approached the fortress wall to listen to the enemy flute music but one night, the presence of Shingen’s entourage attracted the attention of the castle defenders. A sniper’s bullet shot and mortally wounded Shingen
While on his deathbed, Shingen called for one of his most able warriors to raise the Takeda battle flag on the bridge leading to Kyoto, as if he was advancing on the capital. Shingen then collapsed and soon died. It was common practice for a Samurai to compose a death poem, Shingen had chosen an epitaph derived from Zen literature.
It is largely left to her own natural bodily perfection, and she has no special need to resort to artificial coloring and powdering to look beautiful.
The Takeda clan would pass to Shingen’s son, Takeda Katsuyori, who was unable to recover the momentum of his fathers death. He returned home and in order to prevent an attack from the Oda-Tokugawa forces the Takeda kept secret about the death of Takeda Shingen for 2 years.
When Takeda shingen’s death was learned by his great rival Uesugi kenshin, Kenshin wept for him privately and stated, "I have lost my good rival. We won't have a hero like that again!"
Uesugi Kenshin was able to expand in his own right, conquering the contested lands of the south between himself and the Hojo, and to the west leading him into direct combat with the forces of Oda Nobunaga.
The Oda forces had returned to the lands of Nobunaga’s traitorous brother-in-law and conquered the Azai-Asakura alliance by 1573, cementing his power base as undisputed ruler of central Japan.
Hojo Ujiyasu the wise and cunning great leader of the Hojo clan had died a few years earlier, and alongside the death of his great rival Takeda Shingen. Uesugi Kenshin had nobody to fear.
By 1575 Takeda Katsuyori returned to the Tokugawa lands In order to continue his fathers famed march to Kyoto. Katsuyori didn’t think much of the Tokugawa, he was there at mikatagahara and still remembered his fathers decisive victory over the Tokugawa and so his first goal on the warpath was to defeat the Oda’s greatest ally the Tokugawa.
The lands of the Takeda had grown large under his father and many forces were needed in the vast domain to defend from the Takeda’s many enemies. Katsuyori managed to rally 15,000. While the remainder of the army defended their lands.
He entered Tokugawa lands but didn’t want to get bogged down in a large siege which would give the larger Oda clan time to rally to their ally’s aid and so kept changing his objective.
First arriving at the Tokugawa capital of Okazaki, a traitor had conspired against the Tokugawa and offered to open the gates for the Takeda, however he was discovered and executed, so katsuyori changed his plan. Next Katsuyori took his forces to Yoshida castle which Tokugawa Ieyasu had rather intelligently foresaw as his next move and stationed an addition 6,000 troops there, forcing Katsuyori to take the much smaller Nagashino castle.
The defenders of Nagashino castle, greatly outnumbered, held off the Takeda forces. After a few days a Tokugawa samurai managed to sneak through the Takeda lines to deliver a request for aid to Okazaki. At Okazaki Nobunaga had arrived with a grand army numbering around 30,000 twice that of the Takeda.
The Samurai bravely took the message back to Nagashino, that help was on the way. Katsuyori captured the Samurai on his return mission and was impressed by his bravery, offering him a position in the Takeda army should he lie to the defenders that aid was not coming, he figured that if the castle learned no help was coming they would surely surrender and then katsuyori would have a much better defensive position. The Samurai took the deal and approached the castle, surrounded by Takeda soldiers. the Samurai was expected to tell the stoic defenders that aid was not coming, instead he did the opposite Screaming out that the Oda and Tokugawa armies were on the way and to stay strong! He was crucified by the Takeda but the message was heard by the brave defenders and they did not surrender.
Katsuyori was young and unproven yet, he felt he could not return home in failure as his clan might overthrow him.
katsuyori held a meeting between his generals, many of whom were the proven 24 generals of Takeda. They suggested he return home to Kai where they would have a better defensive position and more aid. However katsuyori rejected this and stayed.
The generals of Katsuyori urged him to assault Nagashino castle so that at least they could have a defensive perimeter against them and the much larger forces of Oda Nobunaga. Katsuyori rejected this as well, suggesting they attack the Oda-Tokugawa forces on the field perhaps envisioning another victory like that of his father at mikatagahara.
The night before the battle the 24 famed generals felt their defeat and death was near so they shared a final cup of Sake together. They stayed loyal to their daimyo even amongst all odds.
The next day Nobunaga arrived with his grand army, now swelling in numbers to 38,000
Nobunaga set up a series of palisade barriers to fend off the feared Takeda Cavalry charge.
Katsuyori chose to break up his forces into 5 groups of 3,000, one of these armies would stay behind to maintain the siege of Nagashino. The other 4 groups would take the field to charge the forces led by Nobunga.
On the morning of the battle, a heavy rain overtook the sky, Nobunaga lined up his force behind a shallow river separating the two armies. 3,000 ashigaru armed with arquebusiers lined up behind palisade planks. Katsuyori believed the rain would render the guns useless. Before this guns were only used for defending castles and behind forts, in this battle Nobunaga would revolutionize Japanese warfare. Lining them up 3 men deep, the first volley would fire then retreat to the the back where they could reload and the next volley would come to the front, maximizing the clunky arquebusiers into weapons of mass destruction.
Early in the morning Katsuyori ordered his men to charge the Oda lines from a mere 400 meters out. 3 armies charged the Oda forces, but were slowed down by the shallow river separating the Takeda-Oda forces.
The cavalry expected the initial first volley of fire to be destructive but after that the Arquebusier would need time to reload… however they were greeted immediately after this with a second volley… and then a third. Like a machine gun before the invention of machine guns, the bullets kept coming. Causing massive damage to the oncoming horsemen.
The remaining cavalry reached the palisade wall, few were able to break through and those that did were met with spearmen lined up behind the arquebusiers. The battle went on for hours, and it wasn’t going well for the Takeda. Eventually Katsuyori ordered a full charge of all remaining men under his command, he himself joined in the fighting.
By midday the Takeda forces broke and ran, The Oda forces vigorously pursued and routed the Takeda forces. The Takeda lost 10,000 men in the battle of Nagashino including many of the 24 generals of Takeda Shingen, one of whom was the uncle of katsuyori.
After the battle of Nagashino the Takeda were broken, and those who survived the onslaught limped back home to Kai, Katsuyori among them.
Uesugi Kenshin knew oda nobunaga needed to be dealt with, so he turned to his former rivals son Takeda Katsuyori and formed an alliance to depose Oda Nobunaga once and for all, The Tiger and the Dragon were now marching together.
Kenshin also made peace with the Ikko-Ikki who were still holding up Nobunaga’s forces at their fortress in Ishiyama Hongan-Ji
in Noto Province, (west of Echigo and northeast of Nobunagas territory) the death of a lord sparked up confusion and conflict, Kenshin was quick to use the opportunity, taking land from the weakened clan which had become a vassal to the Oda. In response, Nobunaga pulled together another grand army of 32,000 led by some of his greatest generals including Toyotomi Hideyoshi, Akechi Mitsuhide and shibata katsuie. The ultimate command of the battle would be left toShibata Katsuie
By the time the Oda forces arrived in Kaga province neighboring Noto province, the Oda forces mustered a staggering 50,000 men. Kenshin faced him with around 30,000 men.
The two greatest warlords of the day would now face off to determine the fate of central Japan.
The Oda forces were larger and had more long-range weapons where The Uesugi forces had more experienced veteran Samurai.
The two armies faced each other, both stationed at opposite sides of a river. Kenshin predicted a nighttime river crossing by the oda, so he made sure to provoke it at an opportune moment. Kenshin arranged his army to conceal his actual numbers and detached a small number to trick the Oda forces into thinking it was a nighttime flank.
Katsuie ordered his generals to commence the attack by charging across the river. As the Oda forces marched across the river suddenly a strong current overtook them and carried many of them off while the remaining few were in a precarious position and exposed. Kenshin’s detached force had gone upriver and broken a dike so that the waters would overflow and flood. A tactic he had taken from his old Rival Takeda Shingen.
The Oda forces soon broke and fled across the river. The Oda casulaties were ¼ of their whole force whereas Kenshin’s were minimal. Instead of pressing the attack Katsuie ordered a full retreat. This was a humbling defeat to Nobunaga and dealt a massive blow to his ego.
After his crushing defeat at Tedorigawa Nobunaga considered ceding the northern provinces to Kenshin. He was still tied up with the Ikko-Ikki as well as the west of Japan’s greatest clan, the Mori. Who had recently begun aiding the ikko-ikki
Kenshin was not impressed by Oda Nobunaga, he was surprised at the mediocrity of this great warlord, however it was not Nobunaga he faced on the field of battle it was Shibata Katsuie
Kenshin did not pursue the attack and instead turned back to Echigo to consolidate his new territory, later Kenshin arranged to put forth a grand army to march on Nobunaga, but fate would deter this. Bad weather held up the army’s advance and Uesugi Kenshin the “God of War” died of Esophageal cancer in the spring of 1578….
Shortly before his demise, he wrote this death Poem;
Even a life-long prosperity is but one cup of sake; A life of forty-nine years is passed in a dream; I know not what life is, nor death. Year in year out-all but a dream. Both Heaven and Hell are left behind; I stand in the moonlit dawn, Free from clouds of attachment.
after his death a civil war brown out between the adopted sons of kenshins. The uesugi were now out of the war.
With the death of the great Uesugi Kenshin Nobunaga’s eastern flank was secure, Only one great clan remained to deal with… the great mori clan to the west… After this victory, all of Japan would be unified under Oda Nobunaga.
