thumb|Oda clan
was a Japanese samurai and daimyō and one of the leading figures of the Sengoku and Azuchi-Momoyama periods. He was the and regarded as the first "Great Unifier" of Japan. He is sometimes referred as the "Demon Daimyō" and "Demon King of the Sixth Heaven".
Nobunaga was an influential figure in Japanese history and is regarded as one of the three great unifiers of Japan, along with his retainers, Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu. Nobunaga paved the way for the successful reigns of Hideyoshi and Ieyasu by consolidating power, as head of the very powerful Oda clan, through a series of wars against other daimyō beginning in the 1560s. The period when Nobunaga and Hideyoshi were in power is called the Azuchi–Momoyama period. The name "Azuchi–Momoyama" comes from the fact that Nobunaga's castle, Azuchi Castle, was located in Azuchi, Shiga; while Fushimi Castle, where Hideyoshi lived after his retirement, was located in Momoyama.
Nobunaga emerged as the most powerful daimyō, overthrowing the nominally ruling shogun Ashikaga Yoshiaki and dissolving the Ashikaga Shogunate in 1573. He conquered most of Honshu by 1580, and defeated the Ikkō-ikki in the 1580s. Nobunaga's rule was noted for innovative military tactics, fostering of free trade, reforms of Japan's civil government, and the start of the Momoyama historical art period, but also for the brutal suppression of those who refused to cooperate or yield to his demands.
Nobunaga committed during the Honnō-ji Incident in 1582, when his retainer Akechi Mitsuhide ambushed and trapped him in a temple in Kyoto. Nobunaga was succeeded by Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who along with Tokugawa Ieyasu completed his campaign of national unification shortly afterward.
Early life (1534–1551)
thumb|250px|Portrait of Oda Nobunaga in colour on silk (1583, in Kobe City Museum, Important Cultural Property)
Oda Nobunaga was born on 23 June 1534 in Nagoya, Owari Province, and was the heir of Oda Nobuhide, the head of the powerful Oda clan and a deputy (military governor), and his lawful wife Dota Gozen. Nobunaga was previously thought to have been born in Nagoya Castle, but in recent years the theory that he was born in Shobata Castle has become more accepted. Nobunaga was given the childhood name of , and through his childhood and early teenage years became well known for his bizarre behavior.
Nobunaga mostly spent his time between the age of 13 (the age of maturity at the time) and 18 in hunting, riding, practicing archery and shooting arquebus (still a novelty in Japan at the time), but also wrestling, swimming, watching sumo and visiting taverns and brothels with his friends. He also showed complete disdain for formal clothing and proper social behavior of a lord, wearing sleeveless bathrobes and short trousers tied with hemp rope in public, eating melons while riding backwards on his horse, and often dancing in female clothing in taverns, gaining the nickname The Fool of Owari.
thumb|Site of [[Nagoya Castle (那古野城跡)]]
Nobunaga was given Nagoya Castle by his father at the age of 8 and lived there for 13 years until he took Kiyosu Castle at the age of 21. He had one or two older brothers, but they were illegitimate sons. As the first legitimate son, Nobunaga was intended to succeed Nobuhide as leader of the Oda clan, and so he was separated from his mother and given special education. Four karō (chief retainers), Hayashi Hidesada, Hirate Masahide, Aoyama Nobumasa, and Naitō Shōsuke (or Katsusuke), were assigned to train and educate him for his future role.
Nobunaga came to manhood and took the name Oda Saburō Nobunaga in 1546. He then led the forces of the Oda clan against rival Kira and Ohama in Mikawa for his first campaign in 1547.
In 1548 or 1549, Nobuhide made peace with Saitō Dōsan, lord of Mino Province (which had previously been hostile to Owari) through a political marriage between his son Nobunaga and Dōsan's daughter, Nōhime. Nobunaga took Nōhime as his lawful wife, and Dōsan became Nobunaga's father-in-law. Although Nobunaga was Nobuhide's legitimate heir, a succession crisis occurred when some of the Oda clan opposed him. Nobunaga assembled a force of 1,000 men and used them to intimidate and dissuade his enemies, thus preventing a serious disruption in the transfer of power.
Sensing weakness, the daimyō Imagawa Yoshimoto sent an army under the command of Imagawa Sessai to lay siege to the castle at Anjō, where Oda Nobuhiro, Nobunaga's older brother, was living. To save his life, Nobunaga was compelled to turn over a hostage held by his clan at Honshōji temple, nine-year-old Matsudaira Takechiyo – later known as Tokugawa Ieyasu – an exchange that helped solidify an alliance between other rival clans. Nobuhiro, frustrated by his low standing in the Oda clan, later plotted against Nobunaga with the assistance of another rival, Saitō Yoshitatsu; Nobunaga learned of the plot but chose to forgive his brother's conduct.
In early 1552, barely several months after his father's death, one of Oda's senior retainers, and his son defected to the Imagawa clan. In response, Nobunaga attacked Noritsugu, but was defeated by Noriyoshi's forces at the Battle of Akatsuka. Nobunaga retreated and left contested lands in eastern Owari under Imagawa control. After securing eastern Owari, Nobunaga then turned his attention back to the siege at Kiyosu,
The loss of the Saitō clan's support further undermined faith in Nobunaga's leadership; key retainers such as Hayashi Hidesada, Hayashi Michitomo, and Shibata Katsuie soon turned on him. They raised an army to support his brother Nobuyuki (Nobukatsu), who was highly regarded within the Oda clan. Nobunaga defeated the rebels at the Battle of Ino, but at the plea of his birth mother, Dota Gozen, pardoned them. Despite his brother Michitomo's death in battle, Hidesada pledged his loyalty to Nobunaga and resumed serving him, while Katsuie chose to remain in Nobuyuki's service.
In 1557, however, Nobuyuki conspired with Oda Nobuyasu, lord of Iwakura Castle, to plot another rebellion. Shibata, disgusted by Nobuyuki's treachery and disloyalty, secretly warned Nobunaga. Nobunaga falsely claimed to have fallen ill and had Nobuyuki and his entourage assassinated when they came to visit him. It is said that either Kawajiri Hidetaka or Ikeda Tsuneoki carried out Nobuyuki's murder. and marched toward the capital city of Kyoto, with the pretext of aiding the frail Ashikaga Shogunate. The Matsudaira clan also joined Yoshimoto's forces.
The Imagawa forces quickly overran the border fortresses of Washizu and Matsudaira forces led by Matsudaira Motoyasu took Marune Fortress from the Oda clan. Against this, the Oda clan could rally an army of only 2,000 to 3,000 men. Some of his advisors suggested that he take refuge at Kiyosu Castle and wait out a siege by the Imagawa, but Nobunaga refused, stating that "only a strong offensive policy could make up for the superior numbers of the enemy", and calmly ordered a counterattack against Yoshimoto.
Battle of Okehazama
In June 1560, Nobunaga's scouts reported that Yoshimoto was resting at the narrow gorge of Dengaku-Kazama, ideal for a surprise attack, and that the Imagawa army was celebrating their victories over the Washizu and Marune fortresses. While Yoshimoto viewed victory ahead, Nobunaga's forces marched to the Atsuta Shrine, a fortified temple overlooking the Imagawa camp. Later, Nobunaga moved to , set up a decoy army there, marched rapidly behind Yoshimoto's camp, and attacked after a terrific thunderstorm. Yoshimoto was killed by two Oda samurai. With his victory in this battle, Oda Nobunaga gained greatly in prestige, and many samurai and warlords pledged fealty to him.
Kinoshita Tōkichirō, who would eventually become Toyotomi Hideyoshi, probably participated in the battle, but nothing is recorded from that time. His exploits were first recorded in the Mino Campaign.
Alliance with Matsudaira (later Tokugawa) and Takeda
Rapidly weakening in the wake of this battle, the Imagawa clan no longer exerted control over the Matsudaira clan. In 1561, an alliance was forged between Oda Nobunaga and Matsudaira Motoyasu (who would become Tokugawa Ieyasu), despite the decades-old hostility between the two clans. Nobunaga also formed an alliance with Takeda Shingen through the marriage of his daughter to Shingen's son.
Mino campaign
thumb|160px|Nobunaga's seal
In 1561, Saitō Yoshitatsu, Nobunaga's brother-in-law, died suddenly of illness and was succeeded by his son, Nobunaga's nephew, Saitō Tatsuoki. Yoshitatsu murdered his father and brothers to become daimyō, and Nobunaga had attempted to avenge the murder of his father-in-law numerous times. Nobunaga's nephew Tatsuoki was young and much less effective as a ruler and military strategist than his father and grandfather. literally "All under heaven, spreading military force", or more idiomatically, "All the world by force of arms". Remains of Nobunaga's residence in Gifu can be found today in Gifu Park.
Ise campaign, Omi campaign, and march to Kyoto
Following Nobunaga's conquest of Mino Province in 1567, Nobunaga sent Takigawa Kazumasu on a campaign comprising two invasions of Ise Province in 1567 and 1568 that defeated numerous families of Ise (Ise was ruled nominally by the Kitabatake clan and Kanbe clan). After Nobunaga controlled Ise, his son, Oda Nobutaka was installed as the head of the Kanbe clan. Later in 1569, head of Kitabatake clan, Kitabatake Tomonori, adopted Nobunaga's second son Oda Nobukatsu.
Nobunaga also arranged for Oichi, his sister, to marry rival warlord Azai Nagamasa from Omi Province in an effort to cement an alliance. Nobunaga desired peaceful relations with the Azai clan because of their strategic position between the Oda clan's land and the capital, Kyoto.
In 1568, Ashikaga Yoshiaki and Akechi Mitsuhide, as Yoshiaki's bodyguard, went to Gifu to ask Nobunaga to start a campaign toward Kyoto. Yoshiaki was the brother of the murdered 13th shogun of the Ashikaga Shogunate, Yoshiteru, who had been killed by the Miyoshi tannins (three chiefs of the Miyoshi clan, Miyoshi Nagayuki, Miyoshi Masayasu and Iwanari Tomomichi). Yoshiaki wanted revenge against the killers who had already set up a puppet shogun, Ashikaga Yoshihide.
Nobunaga agreed to install Yoshiaki as the new shogun and, grasping the opportunity to enter Kyoto, started his campaign. An obstacle in southern Ōmi Province was the Rokkaku clan, led by Rokkaku Yoshikata, who refused to recognize Yoshiaki as shogun and was ready to go to war to defend Yoshihide. In response, Nobunaga launched a rapid attack on Chōkō-ji Castle, driving the Rokkaku clan out of their castles.
Unification of Japan (1568–1582)
thumb|[[Ukiyo-e of Oda Nobunaga by Kuniyoshi Utagawa]]
Conflict with Asakura, Ashikaga and Azai
After installing Yoshiaki as shogun, Nobunaga forced Yoshiaki to call all daimyō to come to Kyoto and attend the court banquet. Asakura Yoshikage, head of the Asakura clan and regent of Ashikaga Yoshiaki, refused, which prompted Nobunaga to declare Asakura Yoshikage as a rebel.
Siege of Kanegasaki
In early 1570, Nobunaga then raised an army and marched on the Asakura clan's domain in Echizen. Oda Nobunaga was able to cause castellans of castles in Azai territory to defect, causing retreat of Azai forces. On the 23rd of July, he besieged to Odani Castle in Ōmi Province, but withdrew due to the difficulty of the assault on the 24th. Setting up a siege at Yokohama castle, where his forces were approached from the rear by 8000 soldiers under the command of Asakura Kagetake, who was then joined by Azai Nagamasa.
On the morning of the 30th of July, Nobunaga was joined by Tokugawa Ieyasu a battle occurred on the Anegawa river, near Nomura, in which the Oda were victorious, and the Azai and Asakura clans retreated back to Odani castle. Nobunaga and Ieyasu proceeded to complete the siege of Yokohama castle, then later besieged Sawayama Castle, erecting a long term siege fortifications. Nobunaga spared the lives of Ishiyama Hongan-ji's defenders but expelled them from Osaka and burnt the fortress to the ground. Although the Ikkō-ikki continued to make a last stand in Kaga Province, Nobunaga's capture of Ishiyama Hongan-ji crippled them as a major military force.
Conflict with Takeda
One of the strongest rulers in the anti-Nobunaga alliance was Takeda Shingen, who had formerly been an ally of the Oda clan. At the apex of the anti-Nobunaga coalition, in 1572, Takeda Shingen ordered Akiyama Nobutomo, one of the "Twenty-Four Generals" of Shingen, to attack Iwamura castle. Nobunaga's aunt, Lady Otsuya, conspiring against the Oda clan, surrendered the castle to the Takeda, and married Nobutomo. Nobunaga was shocked by Shingen's betrayal, and his rage was immense. His letter to Uesugi Kenshin was filled with angry words, stating, "Shingen knows nothing of a samurai's honor," "This grudge will never cease," and "I will never reconcile with Shingen, now or in the future."
In the same year, Shingen decided to march on Kyoto at the urging of the shogun Ashikaga Yoshiaki, starting with invading Tokugawa territory. Nobunaga, tied down on the western front, sent lackluster aid to Tokugawa Ieyasu, who suffered defeat at the Battle of Mikatagahara in early 1573. However, after the battle, Tokugawa's forces launched night raids and convinced Takeda of an imminent counter-attack, thus saving the vulnerable Tokugawa with the bluff. This would play a pivotal role in Tokugawa's philosophy of strategic patience in his campaigns with Nobunaga. Shortly thereafter, the Takeda forces were neutralized after Shingen died in April 1573. Tokugawa Ieyasu appealed to Nobunaga for help and Nobunaga personally led an army of about 30,000 men to the relief of Nagashino Castle. The combined force of 38,000 men under Oda Nobunaga and Tokugawa Ieyasu devastated the Takeda clan at the Battle of Nagashino, the greatest defeat of the Takeda clan.
Conventionally, the "Battle of Nagashino" was regarded as a historic defeat in which Takeda Katsuyori ordered his cavalry to charge recklessly into a horse guard fence where arquebusiers were waiting for them, losing many Takeda officers and soldiers. Moreover, it has been said that Nobunaga developed a new battle strategy called "three-stage shooting", in which arquebusiers were arranged in several rows with the front row firing a volley, and then making way for the second row to fire. Once the second row had fired and made way for the third row, the first row had reloaded and were ready to fire again. This way the Oda could keep a relatively steady rate of musket fire.
However, this was a theory developed by the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff based on Oze Hoan's Shinchō Ki and Tōyama Nobuharu's Sōken Ki, which are war chronicles. Later, as research based on documents, letters, and Ota Gyūichi's Shinchō Kōki progressed, many errors were pointed out. It is now believed that it was mainly the logistics in Nobunaga's hands that determined the winner.
End of Takeda clan
The end of the Takeda clan came in 1582 when Oda Nobutada and Tokugawa Ieyasu forces conquered Shinano and Kai Province. Takeda Katsuyori was defeated at the Battle of Tenmokuzan and then committed suicide.
End of the Ashikaga Shogunate
In early 1573, Yoshiaki initiated a siege against Nobunaga under the directive of the monk Kennyo. Takeda Shingen and Asakura Yoshikage tried to subdue Yoshiaki. Azai Nagamasa, Matsunaga Hisahide, Sanninshu Miyoshi, Miyoshi Yoshitsugu, and others also participated in the siege against Nobunaga. Although the siege initially cornered Nobunaga's forces, it failed, as it was interrupted by the death of Takeda Shingen.
In mid 1573, when Yoshiaki began a revolt in Kyoto, he requested the help of the Matsunaga clan and allied with them. Yoshiaki and the Matsunaga clan gathered an army in Makishima castle in April and again in July which is when the revolt started. This angered Nobunaga, who invaded Kyoto. However, when Matsunaga Hisahide saw the hope for success was not achieved he returned to Nobunaga to fight the Miyoshi.
Nobunaga's entry into Kyoto presented him with a situation very different from that from which he had come. Nobunaga reportedly set fire to Kyoto, which forced Yoshiaki to retreat. He focused on Ashikaga Yoshiaki, who had openly declared hostility more than once, despite the Imperial Court's intervention. Nobunaga was able to defeat Yoshiaki's forces, and the power of the Ashikaga was effectively destroyed on 27 August 1573, when Nobunaga drove Yoshiaki out of Kyoto and sent him into exile. Yoshiaki became a Buddhist monk, shaving his head and taking the name Sho-san, which he later changed to Rei-o In, bringing the Ashikaga Shogunate to an end.
Imperial Court appointments
After the Ashikaga Shogunate came to end, the authority of the Imperial Court of Emperor Ōgimachi also began to weaken. This trend reversed after Oda Nobunaga entered Kyoto in a show of allegiance that indicated that the Emperor had the Oda clan's support.
In 1574, Nobunaga was appointed to a rank of Lower Third Rank () of the Imperial Court and made a Court Advisor (). Court appointments would continue to be lavished on a nearly annual basis, possibly in hope of placating him. Nobunaga acquired many official titles, including Major Counselor (), General of the Right of the Imperial Army (), and Minister of the Right () in 1576.
Construction of Azuchi Castle
thumb|Azuchi-jō-zu, a drawing of the [[Azuchi castle]]
Azuchi Castle was built from 1576 to 1579 on Mount Azuchi on the eastern shore of Lake Biwa in Ōmi Province. Nobunaga intentionally built Azuchi Castle close enough to Kyoto that he could watch over and guard the approaches to the capital. Azuchi Castle's location was also strategically advantageous in managing the communications and transportation routes between Nobunaga's greatest foes - Uesugi to the north, the Takeda in the east, and the Mōri to the west. The castle and its nearby town were depicted on the so-called Azuchi Screens, which Oda Nobunaga gave to Pope Gregory XIII, who displayed them in the Vatican collections.
Conflict with the Mōri Clan
The fundamental policy of the Mōri clan was "to avoid conflict with Nobunaga" and in the early 1570s, even when issues arose, they continued a cautious diplomacy to prevent any decisive confrontations. However, when Terumoto placed Ashikaga Yoshiaki under his protection, war between the two families became inevitable. The Mōri were drawn into the Ishiyama Hongan-ji War, Nobunaga's siege of a religious stronghold in Settsu, which he had begun in 1570. beginning with the Battle of Kizugawaguchi in 1576.
Battles of Kizugawaguchi
Terumoto turned to the vaunted Mōri navy. In 1576, First Battle of Kizugawaguchi Nobunaga's 'admiral', Kuki Yoshitaka, had cut the Honganji's sea-lanes and sat in blockade off the coast. Terumoto ordered his fleet, commanded by Murakami Takeyoshi, to make for the waters off Settsu and, once there, the navy inflicted an embarrassing defeat on Kuki and opened the Honganji's supply lines.
Later in 1578, at Second Battle of Kizugawaguchi, Kûki Yoshitaka defeated Takeyoshi and drove the Mōri away. Nobunaga also send Hashiba Hideyoshi to conquer the Chūgoku region from the Mori clan. A further attempt by the Mōri to break the blockade the following year was turned back, and in 1580 the Honganji surrendered.
Conflict with Uesugi
The conflict between Oda and Uesugi was precipitated by Uesugi intervention in the domain of the Hatakeyama clan in Noto Province, an Oda client state. This event provoked the Uesugi incursion, a coup d'état led by the pro-Oda general Chō Tsugutsura, who killed Hatakeyama Yoshinori, the lord of Noto and replaced him with Hatakeyama Yoshitaka as a puppet ruler. In response, Uesugi Kenshin, the head of the Uesugi clan, mobilized an army and led it into Noto against Tsugutsura. Consequently, Nobunaga sent an army led by Shibata Katsuie and some of his most experienced generals to attack Kenshin. They clashed at the Battle of Tedorigawa in Kaga Province in 1577.
Battle of Tedorigawa
In November 1577, the Battle of Tedorigawa took place near the Tedori River in Kaga Province. Kenshin tricked Nobunaga's forces into launching a frontal attack across the Tedorigawa and defeated him. Having suffered the loss of 1,000 men, the Oda forces withdrew south. The result was a decisive Uesugi victory, and Nobunaga considered ceding the northern provinces to Kenshin, but Kenshin's sudden death in early 1578 caused a succession crisis that ended the Uesugi's movement to the south.
On 21 June 1582, before dawn, the Akechi army surrounded the Honnō-ji temple with Nobunaga present, while another unit of Akechi troops was sent to Myōkaku-ji. Although Nobunaga and his servants resisted the unexpected intrusion, they were soon overwhelmed. Nobunaga also fought back for a while before retreating, and after letting the court ladies escape, he committed in one of the inner rooms.
After capturing Honnō-ji, Mitsuhide attacked Nobutada at Nijō, the eldest son and heir of Nobunaga, who also died by suicide.
thumb|Grave of Oda Nobunaga at [[Mount Kōya, Wakayama Prefecture]]
Post-death events
Death and succession
thumb|Political situation in Japan circa 1582. The purple area was territory controlled by the Oda in 1560, grey area was the territory Nobunaga controlled at the time of his death in 1582.
The goal of national unification and a return to the comparative political stability of the earlier Muromachi period was widely shared by the multitude of autonomous daimyō during the Sengoku period. Oda Nobunaga was the first for whom this goal seemed attainable. He controlled most of Honshu shortly before his death in the Honnō-ji Incident of 1582.
After the incident, Mitsuhide declared to the world that he would rule over Nobunaga's territory, but was soon defeated by Toyotomi Hideyoshi. The loss of his position and power so quickly gave rise to the idiom .
Later, Hideyoshi succeeded in regaining Oda's territory and wrested control of it from the Oda clan, further expanding his dominion greatly. And when he was appointed to the highest rank of kuge, Kanpaku, despite being a common-born samurai, and in 1590, eight years after the incident, he achieved the unification of Japan.
The nature of the succession of power through the three daimyō is reflected in a well-known Japanese idiom:
The changing character of power through Nobunaga, Hideyoshi, and Ieyasu is reflected in another well-known idiom:
All three were born within eight years of each other (1534 to 1542), started their careers as samurai, and finished them as statesmen. Nobunaga inherited his father's domain at the age of 17, and quickly gained control of Owari Province through . Hideyoshi started his career in Nobunaga's army as an but quickly rose up through the ranks as a samurai. Ieyasu initially fought against Nobunaga as the heir of a rival daimyō, but later expanded his own inheritance through a profitable alliance with Nobunaga.
In 1582, Nobunaga was posthumously promoted and given the title of Dajō-daijin and the court rank of . More than 300 years later, in 1917, he was further promoted and given the rank of .
In the addendum to Luís Fróis's 1582 Annals of Japan (on Nobunaga's death), it is stated that Nobunaga intended to conquer China. According to Fróis, Nobunaga intended to organise a large fleet after the unification of Japan and to have his sons divide and rule the territory. However, there is no such statement in Japanese sources, and many researchers doubt its authenticity.
According to Luís Fróis's History of Japan, Nobunaga attempted to deify himself in his later years by building Sōken-ji in part of Azuchi Castle and installing a stone called Bonsan as a deity to replace him. Frois, a Christian, attributes this to Nobunaga's arrogance which drove him to the madness of wanting to be worshipped on earth, and the Honnō-ji Incident was his punishment.
Many researchers doubt the authenticity of Frois's description, as there is no mention of this in the Japanese sources. However, the existence of Bonsan itself is mentioned in Shinchō Kōki. As for the reason for his self-deification, it is thought that it was to give legitimacy to those with Oda family blood to rule the country, with a view to establishing a hereditary shogunate after the unification of the country. Later, after their deaths, Hideyoshi and Ieyasu directed themselves to be worshipped as deities, with Hideyoshi being deified as Toyokuni daimyōjin and Ieyasu as Tōshō Daigongen.
In Japan, there have been no small number of persons who have become gods since ancient times. However, they were deified by others after they died as human beings, whereas these three are unique in that they willingly tried to become gods before they died.
The Imperial Court and the Ashikaga Shogunate
Nobunaga led a large army to Kyoto in honour of Ashikaga Shogun Yoshiaki and re-established the Muromachi Shogunate, under which he extended his power into the Kinai region. The conventional theory is that Nobunaga aimed from the outset to overthrow the Muromachi shogunate and clan system and, with Yoshiaki at the top, to seize real power himself, that is to establish a puppet government. In recent years, however, a theory has emerged that Nobunaga and Yoshiaki were good partners and that the final breakdown was due to Yoshiaki's betrayal of Nobunaga, and that Nobunaga did not originally intend to overthrow the Muromachi shogunate.
Starting with the matchlock gun, Nobunaga paved the way for unifying the country through a chain of innovations, from the development of military technology and new weapons, to the international supply chain for importing raw materials for ammunition, to the development of domestic distribution networks, to the way the territory was governed. Those innovations were supported by the financial resources obtained through his economic plans. and promotion of , an economic policy that aimed to revitalize commerce Nobunaga's promotion of raku-ichi raku-za was intended to deprive temples, shrines and court nobles of their privileges and allow the warrior class to dominate the territory in all areas.
In general, Nobunaga thought in terms of "unifying factors", in the words of George Sansom.
Nobunaga implemented financial reforms that introduced a new monetary system. In 1569, the "Oda Nobunaga Eiroku 12 Law" was enacted, which is regarded by some as the beginning of early modern monetary policy in Japan. It was an epoch-making attempt to "increase the volume of money in circulation" and "prevent the inflow of bad money" at the same time. A fixed exchange rate system was introduced, and coins, which had been mixed in disorderly fashion, were clearly defined as standard coins and deteriorated coins. The Oda Clan's guarantee gave value to coins that were considered degraded coins in other regions, revived many coins that had been excluded from trade, and stabilised commercial transactions. At the same time, by differentiating the value of coins according to their exchange rate, the government prevented an excessive influx of deteriorated coins.
Nobunaga also used gold and silver as currency to trade in high-value commodities. Nobunaga himself played a role in expanding the circulation of gold and silver by using gold and silver for purchases in .
One of the attainments of Nobunaga's government, which aimed to unify the country, was the , which began in earnest in 1580, starting with the Kinai region. It was an administrative measure that required the daimyō under his command to submit their harvest in the form of kokudaka figures. This was succeeded by Toyotomi Hideyoshi's .
Nobunaga made personnel decisions based on ability and results, not titles. Until then, the family culture of warlords had been one of respecting family lineage and passing down positions from generation to generation, but Nobunaga made a major shift to a personnel system based on merit. It is known that Hashiba Hideyoshi came from a poor peasant background in Owari, while Akechi Mitsuhide came from a samurai background in Mino, but had spent a long time as a poor ronin. These two men caught up with and eventually overtook Nobunaga's old vassals, including Shibata Katsuie, Niwa Nagahide, Sakuma Nobumori, and others. Among the Oda vassals, Mitsuhide was the first to become the lord of one province and one castle, and the second was Hideyoshi. This was unthinkable for other Sengoku Daimyō.
Local historiography Kunitomo Teppoki states that Nobunaga had already recognised the potential of guns in 1549, six years after they were introduced to Japan, and put Hashimoto Ippa in charge of gun production, and that 500 guns were completed in 1550. Shinchō Kōki also mentions that he learnt marksmanship from Hashimoto Ippa around 1550.
Four years later, in 1554, he fielded guns for the first time at the Battle of Muraki Castle, where Nobunaga replaced his guns one after the other and fired them himself, taking the fort in a single day. The Battle of Nagashino in 1575 is famous for the continuous firing of guns, but Nobunaga had already carried it out 21 years earlier.
Documents left behind in Sakai, which was under the direct control of Nobunaga, describing the manufacture of guns reveal that Japan had already become the world's leading gun power, with mass production based on a division of labour for each part. Radiological analysis also revealed that Japanese-made guns using the Japanese sword forging technique were more stable in strength and more powerful because they contained fewer impurities.
Although a mass production system for guns had been established, there was still no daimyō capable of providing a stable supply of ammunition. Nobunaga was the first to make this possible by establishing an international supply chain to import raw materials for ammunition from China and Southeast Asia through Portuguese merchants, which he facilitated by putting international port cities such as Sakai under his direct control and protecting the Jesuits.
Nobunaga had the previously disparate spear lengths aligned to 3 ken (about ) or 3 and a half ken (about ). The spear lengths used in the Sengoku period were generally 2 ken (). However, when Nobunaga was a teenager, he saw his comrades beating each other with spears in a mock battle and had his army replace their own spears with longer ones, as short spears were useless.
Nobunaga introduced civil engineering not only in the political field but also in the military field by turning the battlefield into a large-scale civil engineering project. This was clearly beyond the scope of preparations for a favorable outcome of the war. He invaded enemy territory in force, mobilizing construction workers, carpenters, blacksmiths, founders, miners, and others to construct roads and build tsunagi-jiro (linking castles). In attacking castles, he adopted the tsukejiro (attaching castle) strategy of building numerous fortifications around enemy castles and narrowing the siege while moving. Toyotomi Hideyoshi took charge of the works as a field supervisor under Nobunaga and later took over his methods.
Nobunaga tried to create a standing army by implementing the separation of soldiers and farmers. Samurais at that time were half-farmers and half-soldiers who spent most of their time as farmers, and only fought at the behest of their lords, who were also the owners of the farmland, in times of war. Therefore, they could not fight much during the busy farming season from summer to autumn.
Nobunaga, on the other hand, attempted to separate soldiers from farmers, although not as thoroughly as Toyotomi Hideyoshi later did. Each time Nobunaga moved his base of operations, he promoted the concentration of his vassals under his castles. As a result, the separation of troops and agriculture was promoted, allowing for planned group training and the formation of army units of different types , such as firearms units and cavalry units.