Oda Nobunaga

Oda Nobunaga: see Nobunaga.

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Oda Nobunaga

(born 1534, Owari province, Japan—died June 21, 1582, Kyoto) With Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu, one of the three unifiers of premodern Japan. He brought the domain of his birth, Owari, under his control and followed that success by defeating the huge forces of a neighbouring daimyo. In 1562 he formed an alliance with Ieyasu, and together they captured Kyoto, which Nobunaga controlled from 1573, thereby ending the Ashikaga shogunate (see Muromachi period). He then turned his attention to crushing the militant Tendai Buddhist monks of Enryaku temple, destroying their headquarters in 1571. He spent the next decade fighting the fanatically religious Ikko sect, defeating their fortress-monastery in Osaka in 1580. His efforts to weaken the strength of the Buddhist temples extended to permitting Jesuit missionaries to build a church in Kyoto; his own interest in Christianity was purely political. In 1582 he had conquered central Japan and was attempting to extend his control over western Japan when he was wounded by a discontented general and committed suicide.

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Oda Nobunaga 

Born 1534; died 1582. Japanese general and the first of the three unifiers of Japan (the other two being Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Ieyasu Tokugawa).

Oda was the administrator of a small principality in Owari Province in the central part of Honshu Island. In 1558 he began a campaign against neighboring feudal princes. In 1568, Oda entered the city of Kyoto, the residence of the shoguns and the capital of Japan, and in 1573 he deposed the last of the Ashikaga shoguns. By 1582, he had united at least one-third of Japan under his power.

Oda fought against the Buddhist monks, who opposed the centralization of the state and had allied themselves with hostile princes. From 1570 he waged a bloody struggle in many provinces against the Ikko sect, under whose banner the peasants revolted. (Ikko-Ikki is the name for the uprisings of the Ikko sectarians.) With a view to strengthening the feudal order, Oda began a land cadastre, abolished internal frontier posts, introduced a unified monetary system, and built roads. He was murdered by Mitsuhide Akechi, one of his closest associates.

REFERENCES

Zhukov, E. M. Istoriia Iaponii. Moscow, 1939. Chapter 3, par. 1.
Ocherki novoi istorii Iaponii. Moscow, 1958. Pages 11–25.
Personality in Japanese History. Berkeley, Calif., 1970.