Battle of Nagashino
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| Campaigns of Oda Nobunaga |
|---|
| Okehazama - Azukizaka - Chōkōji - Kanagasaki - Anegawa - Ishiyama Hongan-ji - Mount Hiei - Nagashima - Mikata ga Hara - Hikida - Odani - Ichijō ga dani - Itami - Nagashino - Mitsuji - Kizugawaguchi - Shikizan - Tedorigawa - Hijiyama - Temmokuzan - Uzu - Honnōji |
| Campaigns of the Takeda |
|---|
| Un no Kuchi - Sezawa - Uehara - Kuwabara - Fukuyo - Nagakubo - Kojinyama - Takatō 1545 - Ryūgasaki - Uchiyama - Odaihara - Shika - Uedahara - Shirojiritoge - Fukashi - Toishi - Katsurao - Kiso Fukushima - Kannomine - Matsuo - Kawanakajima - Musashi-Matsuyama - Kuragano - Minowa - Hachigata 1568 - Odawara 1569 - Mimasetoge - Kanbara - Hanazawa - Fukazawa - Futamata - Mikata ga Hara - Iwamura - Noda - Takatenjin 1574 - Yoshida - Nagashino - Omosu - Takatenjin 1581 - Temmokuzan - Takatō 1582 |
| Campaigns of Tokugawa Ieyasu |
|---|
| Anegawa - Futamata - Mikata ga Hara - Yoshida - Nagashino - Temmokuzan - Komaki - Nagakute - Sekigahara |
The in 1575 took place at Nagashino Castle in the Mikawa of Japan. The castle had been under siege since the 17th of June from Takeda Katsuyori; Okudaira Sadamasa, a vassal of Tokugawa Ieyasu, commanded the defending force. The castle was under attack because it threatened Takeda's supply lines.
Both Tokugawa and Oda Nobunaga sent troops to alleviate the siege and Takeda Katsuyori was defeated. The victory of Oda's Western-style tactics and firearms over Takeda's cavalry charge is often cited as a turning point in Japanese warfare; many cite it as the first 'modern' Japanese battle. Ironically, while Takeda's cavalry charge represents the old, traditional, means of warfare, it was invented by his father, Takeda Shingen, less than a generation earlier. Nevertheless, while others had used firearms previously, Oda Nobunaga was the first to conceive of the wooden stockades and rotating volleys of fire which led to a decisive victory at Nagashino.
The battle
Oda Nobunaga and Tokugawa Ieyasu brought a force of 38,000 men combined, to relieve the siege on the castle by Takeda Katsuyori. Of Takeda's original 15,000 besiegers, only 12,000 faced the Oda-Tokugawa army in this battle. Oda and Tokugawa positioned their men across the plain from the castle, behind the Rengogawa, a small stream whose steep banks would slow down the cavalry charges for which the Takeda clan was known.Seeking to protect his arquebusiers, which he would later become famous for, Nobunaga built a number of wooden stockades, setting up his gunmen to attack the Takeda cavalry in volleys. The stockades served to brunt the force of charging cavalry, provide protection from sword and spear thrusts, and provide limited protection from arrows. Ports or gates in the staggered and overlapping stockades were positioned to channel the calvary charges into lanes where they would be at a disadvantage to further gunfire, arrows, and sword and spear thrusts from the stockade's defenders. There were approximately three gunmen for each four Takeda mounted samurai. Of Oda's forces, an estimated 1,000-1,5000 troops were arquebusiers (while most sources in English list 3,000 as the number of arquebusiers, the vast majority of Japanese historians now agree that the document used as a source for the number of guns deployed had the original number of 1,000 altered by an Edo period Tokugawa family historian to read as 3,000) and they were placed under the command of his horo-shu, or elite bodyguards. Oda sent out small forces against Takeda to feint frontal attacks, which caused Katsuyori to move against Oda's forces.
Takeda's men emerged from the forest and found themselves 200-400 meters from the Oda-Tokugawa stockades. The short distance, great power of the Takeda cavalry charge, and the heavy rain, which Katsuyori assumed would render the matchlock guns useless, encouraged him to order the charge. Takeda's cavalry was feared by both the Oda and Tokugawa, who had suffered a defeat at the Battle of Mikata ga Hara.
The horses slowed to cross the stream, and were fired upon as they came crested the streambed within 50 meters of the enemy. This was considered the optimum distance to penetrate the armor of the cavalry. In typical military strategy, the success of any cavalry charge depends on the infantry breaking ranks so that the cavalry can mow them down. Between the ferocity of the arquebusiers’ attack and the rigid control of the horo-shu, the arquebusiers stood their ground, and were able to fire multiple volleys at the charging cavalry. Ashigaru spearmen stabbed through or over the stockades at any horses that made it past the initial volleys, and samurai, with shorter swords and with spears engaged in single combat with any Takeda warriors who made it past the wooden barricades. Strong forces on the ends prevented the Takeda forces from flanking the stockades. By mid-afternoon, the Takeda broke, fled, and were pursued and cut-down without quarter. Takeda suffered a loss of 10,000 men, two-thirds of his original sieging force. Eight of his famous 'Twenty-Four Generals' were killed in this battle including Yamagata Masakage and Oyamada Nobushige.
Modern Recreations
- The Battle of Nagashino is a large focus of many PlayStation 2 games, predominantly Koei's Kessen III and Samurai Warriors.
In film
The Battle of Nagashino and the last years of the Takeda clan are dramatised in Akira Kurosawa's 1980 film Kagemusha (Shadow Warrior). In the film, a wayward thief is recruited to impersonate the dead Takeda Shingen in the years preceding Takeda Katsuyori's defeat at Nagashino. At the end of the film, the thief witnesses the battle and at its end he is the last one to hold up the Takeda banner.References
- Lamers, Jereon P (2000). 'Japonius Tyrannus'. Leiden: Hotei Publishing.
- Turnbull, Stephen (1998). 'The Samurai Sourcebook'. London: Cassell & Co.
- Turnbull, Stephen (2000). 'Nagashino 1575: Slaughter at the Barricades'. Oxford: Osprey Publishing.
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