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PICTURES OF RYU
DAISUKE AS ODA NOBUNAGA
Portraits of Oda Nobunaga|
Oda Nobunaga at War |
Oda
Nobunaga & Mori Ranmaru |
The Lord Fool
WARNING: THE FOLLOWING WORDY SLICES ARE FULL OF CLICKABLES
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It
was in Gifu that Oda
Nobunaga's best years were related to. He was only around 30 years
old when emerging a victor in a decisive
battle to gain this place and the entire province of Mino;
a ludicrously long shot seen from where he came from, i.e. a rather
impoverished province (Owari), to be exact two obscure
districts and nothing whatsoever more. Until after he got rid of the bothersome
Shogun Ashikaga Yoshiaki (1568-1573), who didn't have
any power left, yet kept on living in a ridiculous delusion of grandeur,
Oda still pretended to uphold the
shogunate, just for the sake of gaining time over hostile
warlords around his territory; that time Oda still bowed to the Shogun
who wouldn't even got anything to live by if not from Oda's
own purse. But Oda was genuinely loyal to the Emperors, Go-Nara
(1527-1557) and Ogimachi (1558-1586). That's the way
Japanese warlords were. No matter how powerful they got, they never forgot
that they were vassals
of the Throne.Although
the actual days spent in Gifu were just a minimum
of all on the calendar, since Oda Nobunaga was almost
always at war and on long journeys, to Gifu he at once galloped whenever
he felt like wanting to be home. Even after he had built the
castle of his dreams, Azuchi, he never had any place
to call his own in Kyoto. He renovated the Imperial
Palace, he built a new one for Shogun Ashikaga,
but each time he went to the capital city of Japan he slept at other people's
places. As master of the Gifu castles, in Kyoto Oda used to spend the
night at monks'
quarters in a temple, and as lord of Azuchi he sometimes rested at
the Nijo Palace. Of course no matter how much Oda loved
to live as a cavalier, he weren't Atilla the Hun. Off the back of his
favorite horses, he was just as earthbound as other warlords of his homeland.
And he didn't
always win the battle of the day. He lost time and time again, but
out he rode to try again after a few nights of relative quietude in Gifu
-- some interval of silence in which new plans of the next wars were hatched.Once,
on the way from Kyoto to Gifu, somewhere around
a place called Otsu, a warrior-monk
sniper took a shot at Oda Nobunaga despite all the soldiers traveling
with and around him at the time, including his
best General Toyotomi Hideyoshi. But the gunshot
only pierced through Oda's sleeve. "My time is up to the gods,"
Oda said laughingly at Toyotomi; but he was no god himself, so he didn't
wait for their interference to subdue the rest of the realm with the aim
of putting
them all under one reign. Oda's troops instantly pursued the lone
sharpshooter, but he called them back. "Leave him alone!" Oda
shouted in the usual thunder he's notorious for. "He's just a stranger;
my most dangerous enemies are in the family."
He meant his brothers in-law and such; especially, at the time when Oda's
headquarters were in Gifu, Takeda Shingen of Kai
and Asai Nagamasa of Omi.Oda
Nobunaga's sons Nobutada, Nobutaka,
and Nobuo seldom saw their dad in anything other than
armors. Like everyone in the Japanese nobility of the time, Nobunaga followed
the routine of political marriages; that's why
this part of his bio has never been minutely trekked like his exploits
in wars. He also was never a family man and he didn't pretend to be one
(his successor Toyotomi was a family man, in contrast; so was his arch-enemy
Takeda). Oda Nobutada was the best of his kids
-- with all the father's positive side -- but the gods took them together
in Kyoto when Oda's own General Akechi Mitsuhide attacked
them both. Nobutada fought until the last of his few men had fallen, so
did Nobunaga. The latter committed the honorable suicide (seppuku)
at the Honno
temple which was already blazing under the morning sky. He told his
famous valet Mori Ranmaru -- who was badly wounded --
to guard the door until he was no more, and then to set fire to his body.
The last words of Oda Nobunaga's, heard by the Akechi
soldiers who broke in too late, were beautifully faithful to his personality:
"No regrets!" Lake
Biwa was a significant spot for Oda Nobunaga, whether during
the Gifu or the Azuchi period of history. His best and accidentally also
favorite General was Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who lived across the lake from
Azuchi at the Nagahama castle. Toyotomi was a great man
himself; unlike Oda, he came from an ordinary family of the
lowest socio-economic-political rank of the Japanese feudalism: the
peasantry. Virtually from nought he climbed so infinitely high on the
power pyramid, like no one ever did before and nobody would ever do after
him. Don't count anyone after the Meiji Restoration of
late 1800's; being today's Prime Minister, too, isn't comparable to
being a ruler in 1500's. A very obvious difference once you remember that
today you are a citizen of Japan while a long way back you would
have been a subject of the Emperor's.
There was one thing Oda Nobunaga knew about life: it ended with death. The entire worldview of the Japanese warriors in general, the samurai's Bushido (this term is fixed by the Tokugawas after Oda has died), was a constant remembrance of this simplest and truest fact. The times gave daily evidence for that; Oda Nobunaga's later half of 1500's was roughly divided into four parts -- the warrior-monks, the warlords, the Shogunate, and the Imperial nobility. All were continuously at war against each other, intriques came as regularly as breakfast, treachery was nearly normal, uncertainty was the order of the day. Oda knew his time would come -- for victory, for glory, for mortality. That's why he bore no regret in the very last minute of his life. Only his job wasn't over yet; but for that he already had the men fitting for every phase of history after he's gone. "
A
man's life of 50 years under the sky [lyrics
to Atsumori,
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Footnote My first nephew's middle-name is 'Nobunaga'. His first name is 'Akira'. Make sense somewhat, doesn't it, Kurosawa-sensei? Click here to see Kurosawa Akira's movie scenes. |
