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History Nugget: How 2,500 Samurai defeated an army ten times their size [1]
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Date: 2023-05-04
About an hour before sunrise, around 3:30 AM on June 19, 1560, a messenger arrived at Kiyosu Castle. The courtiers had relayed numerous messages to their Daimyo (lord) up to that point, but the Daimyo had ignored everyone and had taken to bed.
They had been sternly ordered to relay any news from the front, so they dutifully called out
“My lord, Imagawa forces have begun their attacks on Fort Marune and Washizu.”
Lord Nobunaga sprung awake upon this news and loudly began calling for his armor. An intense fury of movement consumed the entire castle as courtiers fanned out, calling
“Our lord is about to take the field!”
Lord Nobunaga strapped on his armor in less than 20 minutes, and sang his favorite song, the “Atsumori.” Then Lord Nobunaga rode out without waiting for his soldiers, accompanied only by 5 armored courtiers.
Midway to the besieged forts, Lord Nobunaga stopped at the Atsuta Jingu Shrine, where he prayed for victory and waited for his men to catch up.
News of the Lord taking the field spread, and soldiers awakened to realize that their lord had left them behind on the way to battle. Thousands of samurai and ashigaru (common infantry) rushed to join Lord Nobunaga. Seeing the family crest of Lord Nobunaga’s Oda Clan flying above the shrine, they assembled on the large shrine grounds.
By 9 AM, Lord Nobunaga’s forces assembled. About 2000 samurai and ashigaru had been gathered together.
The small army again advanced, stopping by several border forts along the way, picking up a few hundred soldiers, before Lord Nobunaga called for another halt at Fort Zensho-ji, built on a tall hill overlooking a broad valley.
Lord Nobunaga climbed up an observation tower and began squinting looking across the battlefield. He could see that the two forts of Marune and Washizu were already burning. The news of the attack on the forts had been what had prompted his taking the field.
Bad news quickly arrived to confirm his suspicions. Both forts had already fallen, and the commanders of the forts had been killed. All 500 soldiers defending Fort Marune had died.
Lord Nobunaga showed no emotion at this news but continued to look over the battlefield.
it was 10 AM.
For 2 hours, Lord Nobunaga stood waiting for something as storm clouds began to gather. An enemy unit appeared to move onto Mt. Okehazama in the distance.
Then, suddenly, the command came to advance.
Several Karo (senior advisors) protested, saying “My Lord, we are but 2,500. The enemy is 25,000. How can an attack hope to succeed?”
Lord Nobunaga responded “Idiots! The enemy is tired from their offensive on Fort Marune and Washizu. Now is the time to strike.”
The 2,500 men poured out of Fort Zensho-ji, and quickly moved southeast on the road to Okehazama. A furious mix of rain and hail began pouring from the heavens, rendering visibility to near nothing, but the Oda soldiers were defending their territory and many knew the way.
With a clash, the Oda troops ran into a forward guard of the Imagawa army but overran the small unit quickly. The Imagawa soldiers fled towards the larger unit resting at Mt. Okehazama, and the Oda forces pursued the troops right on their heels. Chaotic combat followed.
The Imagawa forces still had over 5000 men present, but the Oda forces coordinated their attacks and steadily fought their way toward the commander’s tent.
An elaborate sedan chair adorned with the family crests of the Imagawa clan was abandoned and the commander fled on horseback surrounded by 300 bodyguards—Lord Imagawa Yoshimoto, the Daimyo of the Imagawa clan himself, was here.
Sensing blood, the Oda forces made hot pursuit. Four times the Oda soldiers caught up to Lord Yoshimoto’s bodyguards, stripping away his defenders each time. Lord Yoshimoto personally was wielding his sword in his own defense.
On the fifth occasion, Lord Nobunaga’s umamawari (Lord’s Horse Guard) caught up to Lord Yoshimoto. First, a soldier managed to stab Lord Yoshimoto in the thigh with a spear. While Lord Yoshimoto’s attention was fixed on that spearman, Mori Shinsuke tackled Lord Yoshimoto from behind and killed him with a short sword.
As proof of the deed, as was customary, Lord Yoshimoto’s head was cut from his body and taken as a prize.
The shocking news of Lord Yoshimoto’s death quickly spread, and the demoralized Imagawa army began retreating, and one of the most remarkable and famous victories in Japanese history was won: the Battle of Okehazama.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There are certain battles in many nations’ histories that transcend the historical genre and become part of the cultural fabric of the nation. Almost any American would know of the Battle of Gettysburg or Omaha Beach, almost any Brit would know Agincourt or Trafalgar.
To the Japanese, the Battle of Okehazama (1560) is one of those battles, although it is very little known outside of Japan.
Two things are probably the largest reasons for the battle’s popular appeal.
The fact a field army of 2,500 managed to defeat an army of 25,000, and
the fact that the 25-year-old warlord who won the desperate battle goes on to unify Japan, and this battle was the first step towards ending a 150-year-long civil war.
Sengoku Period (The Warring States Period)
The Battle of Okehazama takes place during the Sengoku Period in Japan (1467 — 1615), a nearly 150-year-long civil war that saw Japan essentially split at one point into over a hundred independent nations battling against each other.
Since the late 12th century, Japan had developed a system of government called the Shogunate. Although Japan had been largely unified under the Emperor sometime around the 7th century, the Imperial system began to break down. The aristocracy became absentees who spent their time in the imperial capital of Kyoto, leaving the administration and defense of their provincial territories to the lower-ranking warrior caste called the Samurai.
The Samurai gradually grow discontent with their status, and seized power for themselves in a gradual process from the 11th~late 12th centuries. But when they did, they did not remove the aristocracy or the Emperor, rather ruling “on behalf of” the Emperor. The Emperor and the aristocratic court were rendered a symbolic and powerless institution, with the Samurai taking virtually all de facto power for themselves.
The leader of the Samurai was given the title of Sei-Tai-Shogun, or more commonly Shogun. Therefore, this system of governance was called the Shogunate. A close European analog would be the Mayors of the Palace in the Frankish Kingdom in the late Merovingian Dynasty, where the Mayor held all power and the “do-nothing-kings” were powerless.
The Shogunate system essentially collapsed in 1467. The Ashikaga Shogunate (the 2nd Shogunate dynasty) was a feudal system that appointed regional governors called “daimyo.” The Daimyo could rule their territories as they saw fit, but they had obligations of duty to the central shogunate government.
However, the central government became increasingly corrupt and began to lose control of the powerful Daimyo. A series of succession disputes led to Daimyo taking sides with succession candidates and open warfare began being waged at the capitol of Kyoto. The conflicts culminated in a devastating civil war called the Onin War in 1467.
Once it became clear to all that the central government no longer had much power, money or ability to enforce its decrees, the Daimyo all over Japan began acting as if they were independent nations, crafting alliances and conducting wars of expansion amongst themselves.
Furthermore, the regional Daimyo themselves began to lose control. In the provinces, the Daimyo’s feudal lieutenants and even common soldiers saw the anarchy and breakdown of law and order as an opportunity for advancement—if the lord was weak or stupid, there was no reason why a strong and intelligent samurai shouldn’t take over the province. The entire nation slowly descended into anarchy, where only the strong could long survive.
Governance of provinces was often conducted by familial relations. Family “clans” sharing the same name would wield political influence in regions ruled by a Daimyo of that name.
The two combatants in the Battle of Okehazama were the Oda Clan, led by Lord Nobunaga, and the Imagawa Clan, led by Lord Yoshimoto.
Oda Nobunaga, the “Idiot of Owari”
The best way to understand the two sides of this conflict is to the west, you have the upstart Oda clan that usurped power from the traditional daimyo of the Owari province and made themselves the rulers. To the east, you had one of the oldest and most prestigious houses of the old order, the Imagawa Clan.
Nobunaga was born as the eldest legitimate son and presumptive heir, but as he grew older, concerns about him grew. Contemporary sources widely reported that he was well known as the “utsuke” of Owari, meaning The Idiot of Owari.
Nobunaga dressed strangely, with a kimono with its sleeves torn off. He claimed made it easier to move around forests or wield weapons. He wore a flamboyant pair of pants where one pant leg was made from tiger hide, the other from leopard hide.
Instead of spending time with the higher-ranking children who were heirs to positions of power, Nobunaga spent his time traveling the countryside, mingling with commoners, bringing along a large band of rowdy second and third sons who had no prospects.
The most famous episode of his bizarre behavior came at his father’s funeral. Nobunaga’s father passed away suddenly from an illness at 40. Nobunaga’s rivals to power (his brother and his uncles) attended the funeral as normal, but Nobunaga showed up quite late.
Furthermore, instead of wearing formal funeral attire, he wore ordinary clothing. Instead of lighting a stick of incense to show his respects, he picked up a handful of incense ash and angrily hurled it at his father’s spirit tablet (a small icon representing the spirit of an ancestor).
There is some speculation among modern historians that Nobunaga may have been on the autism spectrum.
However, once he grabbed the reins of power, he began showing his military and political brilliance, outmaneuvering his rivals.
The core of his army was a band of bodyguards, composed of second and third sons, whose only prospects for success were to earn it on the battlefield. They frequently carried Nobunaga to victory against the odds.
By 1560, Nobunaga had succeeded in re-unifying Owari by defeating his rivals with one exception.
In the southeastern corner of his province, several key castles that defended the entry into his province had defected to the Imagawas. Nobunaga’s father had entrusted the castles to some of his most trusted lieutenants, but these men had seen Nobunaga’s bizarre behavior and concluded that they were better off under the Imagawas to the East.
Yoshimoto’s Advance on Owari
The Imagawa Family was an ancient and illustrious family that had been appointed lordship and maintained its control. They were among the highest-ranking Samurai of the old order, and one of the few old families that managed to maintain their control into this turbulent period.
The head of the clan was Imagawa Yoshimoto, 41 years old and at the apex of his power. He too had overcome rival claimants for power and secured his birthright by ability. Yoshimoto is famous for instituting a major legal and administrative overhaul of the governance of his province that centralized authority, and made it easier for him to mobilize large segments of his population in wartime. Reforms were quickly copied by forward-thinking warlords and spread throughout Japan.
Considered one of the best generals of his generation, Lord Yoshimoto had fought the powerful Takeda Clan to the North and the Hojo Clan to the East for decades. Lord Yoshimoto had also fought Nobunaga’s father over control of the Mikawa province, caught between the two powers, and had been victorious.
Lord Yoshimoto’s ambitions became clearer as he began to take steps to now extend his control into Oda territory in Owari Province.
In 1554, Yoshimoto signed a 3-way alliance with his northern and eastern rivals, the Takeda and the Hojo. This permitted him to place his full attention on the West.
For the next 4 years, Yoshimoto focused on extending his administrative control over Mikawa Province, securing his logistical lines of supply towards the west.
With these diplomatic and administrative preparations secure, the Imagawa clan assembled a massive army of 25,000~30,000 soldiers and marched west towards Owari. This was approximately ten times the size of the field army that the Oda Clan would put in the field.
The total army size of the two powers overall was not so overwhelming. However, Nobunaga was forced to defend both his northern and western borders, while Yoshimoto’s diplomacy secured the safety of his rear. Yoshimoto was able to bring his entire military strength to the battle.
However, Yoshimoto’s army may have included several thousand highly unenthusiastic contingents from his allies to the North (Takeda) and East (Hojo). These allied troops may have made an appearance to fulfill a promise from the alliance but had little interest in risking their lives for the Imagawas' gain.
Additionally, while Nobunaga’s field army was around 2500 (estimates range from 2000 to 3000), he had an additional few thousand troops in forts in the area, making the total size of his forces around 5,000~6,000.
It is not to say that the force disparity at the battle was not immense, but in reality, it may have been something more like three to one, or four to one, not a true “ten to one.”
Nobunaga’s Plan
It was clear that Nobunaga had been planning for this confrontation for some time.
It was alarming that Lord Nobunaga had lost the loyalty of the cornerstone of the southeastern portion of his province. The area abutted Imagawa territory and the three castles of Mizukake, Otaka and Narumi were considered well-positioned and highly defensible. Losing them was a major blow.
Thus Lord Nobunaga made it a high priority to recapture these castles. In preparation, or perhaps to provoke a response from Lord Imagawa, Lord Nobunaga constructed a series of 5 forts in positions aimed to disrupt supply and communications from the castles.
These castles were not under serious siege, as the forts were built too far from the castle to conduct a siege of themselves. But they provided ideal staging grounds and places to hoard supplies for if a siege might be conducted by an army the following year.
Building forts in hostile territory was not common around this time in Japan, and it was an alarming innovation from the young lord to the castle's defenders. This was a tactic Nobunaga and his disciples would repeat to great effect over and over the next 50 years until it became a standard tactic among most armies.
Nobunaga likely calculated that the 2 forts to the south (Fort Washizu and Fort Marune) would be the Imagawa’s first targets because if the Imagawa ignored them, they potentially faced an ambush from their flank at the only river crossing nearby south of Fort Zensoji.
Nobunaga placed a few hundred men each in the two forts, and this represented a substantial proportion of his combat power. If Nobunaga had around 5,000 men, he was placing almost 20% of his available forces at these two forts.
However, because he placed a substantial force there, Imagawa forces could not ignore the fort and move on. Furthermore, they had to commit a substantial size of forces to quickly overwhelm and storm the forts, as Nobunaga anticipated.
Nobunaga could count on this because campaigns in 1560 were a battle against time.
Imagawa forces were a mix of peasant conscripts and samurai. The peasant conscripts, who were a large proportion of the armies, could only serve during the summer months. May (rice planting season) and October (the harvest) had to take precedence, or the entire province could literally starve.
That gave warlords about 4 months (June ~ Sept) to conduct a campaign. When taking into account the time to assemble the army and march to an objective, then return, a warlord might have only 14-15 weeks to a campaign season.
Thus, the Imagawa forces could not starve out the forts if they wanted to make any substantial gains before the end of the campaign season—they had to quickly storm the forts and move on.
But this time pressure would lead to a large army splitting their forces and spreading out thinly—and this appears to have been Nobunaga’s aim.
The Historical Debate
There are 2 great historical debates surrounding the battle.
Was Lord Nobunaga’s attack on Lord Yoshinobu’s headquarters a surprise attack, or a direct frontal assault?
How did Lord Nobunaga know where Lord Yoshinobu was? Did he even know?
As to the first point, traditional accounts of the battle, which were crafted by chroniclers writing 150-200 years after the battle during the Edo Period, adopted the stance that Lord Nobunaga took a circuitous route to attack Lord Yoshinobu that allowed him to launch a surprise attack. This conveniently explains why Nobunaga’s tiny force achieved such a great victory against the odds.
Yet, more recent research focusing on primary sources, led to a widespread rejection of the traditional account. The surprise attack narrative doesn’t really appear in contemporary sources, and one primary source goes so far as to say, the Imagawa troops could see the Oda forces coming from Mt. Okehazama.
Furthermore, the route of advance described in contemporary sources uniformly rejects the idea of a circuitous advance, thus historians are generally today in agreement that Lord Nobunaga launched a frontal assault.
This actually leads to more questions, as to why Nobunaga won. Since, his forces would have been marching at fast speed for several miles, outnumbered, and attacking up a muddy hillside slick from rain and hail, it seems extremely strange that the outnumbered attackers would win.
However, Nobunaga’s personal guard has a tendency to beat the odds and defeat much larger forces when committed to battle—at the Battle of Inou (1556), the Battle of Ichijou Valley (1573), the Battle to Tennoh-ji (1576), Nobunaga commits his personal guard to battle and swings battles where he had a local numerical disadvantage of 3:1 to 5:1.
Some researchers hold that Nobunaga-’s personal guard represented a meritocratic professional soldier corps, much earlier than the professionalization of Samurai in the late 1500s. A well-trained core of a few hundred Samurai who don’t split time as farmers as most other Samurai did in the mid-1500s might have been a devastatingly powerful unit that could exert combat power many times its size.
There are other theories, such as the existence of a separately mounted flanking force dispatched by Nobunaga, the idea that Yoshinobu’s main force was actually a small number of combat troops and mostly logistical supply carrier non-combatants, and other theories, but why Nobunaga’s force won out so decisively and quickly remains an open question.
The biggest unsolved mystery of the battle, however, is how did Lord Nobunaga know where Lord Yoshimoto was?
While Nobunaga’s perch could see the movement of an army towards Okehazama, it would be impossible to see that it was the main body of the Imagawa force. There are basically two competing viewpoints:
Scout/spy theory
Accidental attack theory
The scout/spy theory holds that Nobunaga had dispatched scouts to identify and report back to him the location of the main Imagawa force.
A story likely invented in the Edo period held that a man was considered to have made the greatest contribution to victory and that he was the scout that discovered Yoshimoto’s location, but primary sources do not indicate the man was
A scout
Discovered Yoshimoto’s position
Was considered to have made the greatest contribution
thus the entire story is today seen as a fabrication.
However, though the scout/spy story entirely lacks any primary source support, many historians hold that this is the most likely reason. For example, it has been pointed out that out of all the Imagawa clan units, the main headquarters unit would have been identifiable by the length of their spears.
Standard peasant conscript units that make up the bulk of Imagawa forces would have been issued spears, thus all would be the same length and shape. However, Lord Yoshimoto’s bodyguards would be composed of high-ranking samurai. Their spears would be of varying lengths and shapes based on their personal preference.
This could have been a giveaway as to the headquarters' location to spies.
This, however, is entirely speculative.
The other possibility is that Nobunaga attacked Yoshimoto’s headquarters by accident. Historians who support this theory point to the primary source evidence that indicated an exchange between Lord Nobunaga and his lieutenants at Zensoji, where Nobunaga said “The enemy is tired from attacking Fort Washizu and Fort Marune,” as the reason for the attack to proceed.
Historians point to certain sources that suggest that Lord Yoshimoto may have been observing the attacks on the two forts from Otaka Castle, to the West. Then, after the forts fell, his unit may have been returning to Mizukake Castle (off-map to the East), and rested at Mt. Okehazama.
This would explain much since Nobunaga would have seen a force leave Otaka Castle and head east towards Mizukake Castle in the rear.
Nobunaga may have assumed that the forces attacking the two forts were now returning to the rear, in a rotation of forces. In that case, Nobunaga’s aim was to attack two units that were exhausted from hours of combat, and to destroy the two units and gain momentum and morale—not to find and kill Lord Yoshinobu.
In this telling, Nobunaga’s attacking Lord Yoshinobu’s headquarters was an incredible coincidence and stroke of luck.
Other historians argue that such a coincidence defies belief.
There’s no definitive answer—I personally subscribe to the “accidental attack” theory as best supported by primary source evidence, but the support remains weak.
Aftermath
Even if Lord Nobunaga’s discovery of Lord Yoshinobu’s headquarters was an incredible stroke of luck, what happened afterward diplomatically and militarily indicates Lord Nobunaga’s genius.
One of Lord Yoshinobu’s lieutenants was the puppet lord of Mikawa Province, and the puppet cut his strings and declared independence immediately after the battle. A man named Matsudaira Motoyasu.
A lesser man may have seen this as an expansion opportunity to attack a weak new independent ruler on his border. Lord Nobunaga saw this as an opportunity for a diplomatic coup.
Lord Nobunaga entered into an alliance with the Matsudaira Clan of the newly independent MIkawa province, creating a buffer between itself and the Imagawa clan’s remaining territory.
This freed Lord Nobunaga to strip his defenses on his southeast flank and send his entire army north and west—paralleling Lord Yoshinobu’s diplomacy.
in the next 22 years, Lord Nobunaga would bring most of central Japan under his control including the capital of Kyoto. His military was so powerful he had no true equal any longer, and the unification of Japan appeared imminent.
But like a Japanese Julius Caesar, as it appears Lord Nobunaga’s ascendance was preordained, he was assassinated by his most trusted lieutenant in 1582. But it would primarily be his own lieutenants who fought over control of the former Oda territories who would make a bid to finally unify Japan.
Special thanks to BarbeCul for editing work on my diaries
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