Welcome to Echoes of History, the place to explore the rich stories from the past that bring the world of Assassin's Creed to life. I'm Matt Lewis. In case you haven't seen it, the world premiere of Assassin's Creed Shadows was released recently, and we see that it sets the game in feudal Japan, a time renowned for its samurai and ninjas, a time rich in history, culture and stories. As we have been for the last few episodes, we're continuing to explore this fascinating period in history, delving into the intricate landscapes of power and ambition which as a player you'll be able to explore first hand in Assassin's Creed Shadows, meeting even more figures who dominated and dared to defy. From the rise of the infamous warlord Oda Nobunaga to the fortified palaces of the capital Kyoto and the brutal battles of the Tensho Iga War, we'll dive deeper into this period in time that continues to fascinate. In this episode, we continue our epic journey exploring this turbulent time, focusing on the life of Japan's first great unifier, Oda Nobunaga, who we encounter in the game. But how did he emerge as Japan's dominant daimyo in an era of incessant social upheaval and civil war? To help answer this, I'm joined by Nate Ledbetter of the Department of East Asian Studies at Princeton University. Nate is an expert on 16th century Japan, so he's perfectly placed to help us peel back the layers of history and explore Oda Nobunaga's storied life. Welcome to Echoes of History Nate, it's wonderful to have you here. Oh, thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here. We have been kind of skirting around this guy Oda Nobunaga, we've mentioned him several times. He crops up obviously a lot during this history. So I thought this was a really good chance to get to know him a little bit better. So we're going to have a whole episode devoted to Oda and everything that we can find out about him. So I'm really looking forward to getting under his skin a little bit. And just to set the scene, Oda Nobunaga lives kind of during this period of great upheaval in Japanese history, the warring states period. What does Japan look like when Oda Nobunaga is born? So before he's politically active, what is the situation in Japan? So this is an age called the warring states period in Japanese, the Sengoku jidai. And normally what that means when we describe it is that over the previous centuries, the Imperial Court in Kyoto had delegated control of the military establishment to a succession of warrior governments that we call shogunates or bakufu under the leadership of a shogun. But by the early 16th century, the current shogunate under the Ashikaga family had lost control over administration of the provinces, mostly due to the internal succession conflicts taking place within the ranks of their major supporters and also of their own house, the succession line of the shogunates themselves. We often hear the phrase ge kokujo associated with this period or this idea of the low overthrowing the high. So lower ranking officials or samurai kind of rising up against their masters and establishing local dominance. What's really going on here is that with all the conflict within the shogunate and involving the major military governors that were subordinate to it, they're focused on their own power struggles within Kyoto and within their own families. And so more and more, they have to designate their subordinates out in the provinces, the deputy governors and such as the local leadership and delegate that local power to them. So more and more of these higher ranking kind of samurai nobles, military governors, members of the shogunate are more and more separated from what's going on in their actual domains that they nominally control. And so many of these subordinate families, the deputy governors and so on, use this lack of supervision to effectively take over control of the provinces. The Oda family, of which Nobunaga is the most famous, is one of these deputy families having governed Awari apartments initially in the name of the Shiba family of military governors. So when Nobunaga is born in 1534, the Oda family effectively had control of Awari province at this point. Though the family itself was fractured and Nobunaga's branch was interestingly not the primary lineage. So kind of to sum up the whole idea of the Warring States period, we have these fractures at almost all levels of military society. Yeah, so if he's born in 1534, it sounds like he's born in the middle of a pretty chaotic period, but he's also of relatively humble origin. You know, you say he's not the primary line of the family. He's not sort of a senior noble figure, which obviously makes it all the more impressive what he goes on to achieve. What do we know about what his early life is like? Who are his family and what position of power are they in? So the Oda family, as I said, they were the deputy governors underneath the Shiba family in Awari, and he's born as the first legitimate son of a man named Oda Nobu Hide, who is the defacto leader of the Oda family. Like I mentioned, his line was not the senior line, but Nobu Hide was particularly capable and competent and brought his relatives under his control and for the most part dominated the governance of Awari province. But he was in constant conflict with his neighbors, particularly the powerful Imagawa Yoshimoto to his east and a daimyo named Saito Dosan to his north in Mino province. So Nobunaga's youth would have been one where his family was in constant conflict, both internally and externally. He was designated Nobu Hide's heir rather early on, and given the education that you would expect of an heir, he was given four of Nobu Hide's high-ranking subordinates as his tutors, so to speak, kind of to raise him up and teach him the ways that he would need to rule both military and politically. But it's often said he was a bit of a wild child who preferred running around with his friends rather than studying, out hunting, and raising all kinds of ruckus. Allegedly he wore outlandish outfits like a tiger skin cloak, and generally he didn't really act the part of an up-and-coming warlord. You'll often hear that he was called the Fool of Awari. And whether this is true or not, if it was true, whether this was an act to throw enemies off guard or accurate, and he really was just kind of off in his own little world, it's hard to know for sure. But in 1549, he marries the daughter of Saito Dosan, who is located to Awari's north in Mino province, as part of a peace agreement between Dosan and Nobu Hide. And so he's being raised for the role of taking over as the Oda family's heir. It's unclear at this point whether he's really taking that role seriously. It sounds a bit like one of those annoying rich kids. He's got all dad's money and a nice car to drive around in, being flash and everything else, but not taking the role very seriously at this point. Yes, yeah. What happens then when Nobu Hide dies? So Nobunaga's been prepared. He's had this education even if he's not kind of invested in it too much. Does he manage to succeed his father smoothly? Smooth is the last thing that you would probably call it. So Nobu Hide dies in 1551. And despite Nobunaga being his heir, there's some contention based on his pattern of erratic behavior. One of the famous events that is often brought up is at Nobu Hide's funeral. Nobunaga shows up allegedly very unkempt, not in the proper formal funeral attire, and acts very disrespectfully, throwing incense at the altar instead of performing the proper respectful rituals. And based off of this, we are told that some of his father's vassals form a faction around his younger brother while other branches of the family. So this is an opportunity for them to seize control, push this loser who's not ready for the job out of the way. Other vassals defect to the Imagawa or plot with the Saito. So his position upon his father's death is actually very precarious. This somewhat changes, at least according to the stories we were told about young Nobunaga, which we always, of course, have to take with a little grain of salt, being as they were written after the fact and maybe embellished a bit to build up his legacy. But in 1553, one of his senior retainers, one of these four men who was designated as his tutors and mentors, a man by the name of Hirata Masahide, commits suicide. So think of the image of seppuku ritual suicide in your head. Can we just go into a bit of detail about what seppuku actually involves? Sure. So much later in the Edo period where things have been a little bit more formally codified in terms of what seppuku is. But the word literally means, you know, slicing of the belly. And you'll often hear the kind of more informal phrase, hadakiri associated with it as well. But it's essentially the idea that the soul of the body is seated in the stomach. And so as a way to show your sincerity in death, the samurai would often take their short sword, known as a wakazashi, and use it to disembowel themselves, making two cuts in their stomach as a way to both show their bravery in the face of what must be an excruciatingly painful way to die, but also releasing their soul, as it were, through both of these avenues kind of making it a pure death. You know, you'll often cure this act of seppuku being executed in the wake of a defeat in battle that's a little bit overblown. We have this image of the samurai never accepting defeat and always killing themselves rather than surrendering. That is far from the reality. But you know, certainly in the Edo period, it was often used as a punishment. Sometimes samurai would commit seppuku as a means of following their masters into death. It's default particularly royal. And at various times that was outlawed because well, what's the heir supposed to do and all the senior retainers who are supposed to advise him, you know, as he takes over commit suicide? Well, you know, he's kind of out of luck. But anyway, another form that this could take was an act called kanshi, which is essentially a suicide of protest normally done to protest what the person committing suicide would see as like unjust policies or maybe unwise decisions by his lord. So in this case, we have Hirata committing this form of protest suicide. And it serves as a way to wake up young Nobunaga to his rather outlandish behavior and how it's being detrimental to both, you know, his own well-being and the well-being of the Oda family. You know, how much of this is actually how things went down. It's almost impossible to say, but it does seem that from this point, there is a bit of a change in attitude. And he does begin to more seriously concentrate on consolidating his control over Owa-i and the Oda family. There's a really interesting parallel, I guess, in English history to Shakespeare's version of Henry V, who he paints as this wild child who immediately that he comes to the throne has this real conversion to an incredibly serious and driven person. We don't know how much of that wild Henry V is Shakespeare's imagination. There's not too much evidence of it. And it sounds like Nobunaga falls into that category a little bit, has a bit of a reputation, but we don't know how much he deserves it. Yeah, you can definitely say that at least according to the traditional narrative, he definitely has his Prince Hal stage. And then once his father dies and he takes over, he goes through that a little bit more until this incident. One of the theories of this, of course, is that because he understood his weak position, he was attempting to show that he was not a threat to any of the people who would be tempted to take over and overthrow him. That's out there. I mean, again, it's really hard to know the truth of this. And I'm sure it's some combination of all the above. But yeah, there's this idea out there, oh, he was this mastermind from the very beginning, faking it and acting all crazy so that he threw off his enemies. How much is true? How much is it? I'll leave it up to the audience to decide. So having had what's positioned as a wake up call for him, how does Nobunaga then go about gaining control over the Oda clan? Having sort of seemed to alienate several of the other members and others are positioning themselves for power. How does he bring all of that back together and establish himself as their leader? So his first fight is to simply gain control of his own family, you know, largely inside of Owati province. There's some pressure from external enemies that Imagawa to the east. But initially from 1552 to 1554, he's contending with iterations of rebellion from his uncle, Nobutomo, who inspired to assassinate him and worked with, you know, other entities to try to make that happen. Nobunaga catches him and forgives him once. But you know, second time he continues to plot. Nobunaga captures him and has him put to death. In 1556, again, out of fears that Nobunaga is just not up to the task. Several of his major retainers side with his younger brother Nobuyuki, but Nobunaga, you know, warned of potential treachery at one point, feigns an illness instead of going to go meet his brother. So his brother comes to meet him. And when he does, Nobunaga has him and his entourage assassinated. So the 1550s is really the story of Nobunaga's consolidation of his power within the Oda family, establishing himself as the leader of the family. And by default, almost the ruler of the Oda province. In 1559, his final obstacle is the castle of Iwakura and his cousin Nobuyasu, who belongs to the senior branch of the Oda line. But he manages to take Iwakura castle and eliminate Nobuyasu. And this ends the internal threats now. He's the dino of the Oda family and in control of Iwari province. It's really interesting to wonder whether people underestimated him all along or whether it was that series of threats that really galvanized Nobunaga into the man that he would become. I think most of the time in questions like this, I tend to say it's a little bit of column A, a little bit of column B, but certainly having to navigate these struggles initially as he did, and likely, you know, as he was growing up underneath his father, he saw the fault lines along which, you know, different elements of the family fell. That certainly was a good training ground for the political and military maneuvering that would happen later on in his life. So once Nobunaga has control of Iwari province, how does he then go about looking outward and beyond his own borders? Because his province is quite a small one comparatively as well, isn't it? Yes, so Iwari is small, but it centers on a plane, the Nobuy plane, Japan is very mountainous, right? There's only a few large flat areas where cultivation can take place at large scale, and Iwari happens to sit in one of these, the Nobuy plane. So while it's a small province, it's a particularly wealthy one in terms of agricultural income. So it's a good place to be based out of. It's far enough away from the capital that you're not in the middle of the intrigues and plots going on there, but it's close enough that you can get there if you decide to be part of those plots. So everything is really, as it so often is in history, it's a combination of luck, opportunity, and talent. It's really external forces that first act on him rather than him choosing to go out. Like I said, he consolidates his power by 1559 within Iwari. In 1560, the powerful daimyo Imagawa Yoshimoto to his east, enrolled Toutomi, Suroga, and the Kawa provinces, and came from the illustrious Imagawa line, which was one of the pillars of the former Ashigaga shogunate. He decides, or it's usually assumed at least that he decides that he's going to make a run at marching on the capital of Kyoto to take charge of the central government. So he gathers together an army of 25,000 troops and begins his march east. And the first stop is, of course, his neighbor in Iwari province, Nobunaga. So he has to go through Nobunaga's domain. On paper, this is going to be very easy. He's got 25,000 troops, which at the time was a very large army. And Nobunaga only has a few thousand men, maybe 2,500. So we're looking at roughly around a 10 to 1 disadvantage. But Nobunaga, despite the fact that his advisors all counsel him to withdraw into his castle at Kyosu and withstand a siege, he decides that that's a losing strategy. Because what's he going to do against an attack by an army that size? He decides that his best course of action is to try to seek an opening and attack. I won't believe the details of the battle because we have so much to cover. But the Imagawa forces by midday had made significant progress against the Odo forces invading. So the Imagawa army was much larger. It was rather spread out and divided. The vanguard had taken several of these forts that Nobunaga had. Yoshimori himself was with only a few thousand troops. And at his command post, they took a bit of a siesta, almost, if you will, in this small narrow gorge called Dengaku Hazama. And they were celebrating some of the Imagawa troops had already broken into the celebration sake in anticipation of their great victory that they saw coming because, you know, how could you see anything else? A little bit after this, there's a rainstorm. This was in the summer. So the rainy season in Japan. This thunderstorm breaks out and it really helps Nobunaga maneuver his forces through the mountains, through these narrow passes into position to attack Imagawa Yoshimoto's headquarters camp. They broke out of the tree line to attack the camp. And at first Yoshimoto assumes that it's a drunken brawl taking place amongst his men. Too late, he realizes that it's not that he's actually under attack. And shortly after that, two of the Otis samurai relieve him up his head. In the aftermath, the Imagawa forces deprived of their commander melt away in confusion. And we have this almost legendary victory by other Nobunaga outmanned ten to one, destroying the forces of this great daimyo. So it kind of makes a name for Nobunaga. Another key thing about this battle, though, and the aftermath is that in the confusion of the Imagawa family with the loss of their head, several of their more talented and younger retainers, one of which we know today in Stokugawa Ieyasu, are able to claim independence. And Ieyasu establishes himself in his home territory of Mikawa, which is just to the east of Iwari, and establishes an alliance with Nobunaga, thus providing a secure flank to Nobunaga's east, allowing Nobunaga to then look in other directions as he begins to expand. Incredible combination of luck and judgment and good timing and bad weather and early celebrations. But it all turns out perfectly for Nobunaga. We know he will establish control over someone who is effectively a puppet shogun for him shortly after this. How does he then move from being under such threat and pressure to suddenly becoming one of the most significant figures in Japan? Right. So first, before I get into that in detail, I do want to say, you know, his father-in-law, Saitou Dousan, had ruled the province to his north, Mino Province, but was murdered by his son, Saitou Yoshitatsu, who then dies in 1561, leaving his somewhat incompetent son, Tatsuoki, in charge. So Nobunaga, his next target is this province to his north, Mino Province, which is much larger in size than Owarii, and it's somewhat kind of the nexus of road networks in central Japan, where two of the major roads from Chiyoto into the capital in central Japan to the east runs through it. So it's a pretty strategic province to have. So he goes to war against Saitou Dousan and it takes a while, but through diplomacy and bribery of the Saitou generals, he's able to convince many of them to join his side. And by 1567, he's weakened them enough to besiege and take the main castle at Inabayama, which he then renames Gifu. To bring it back to the question that you had just asked, this renaming is symbolic because it's a reference. It's the Japanese reading of the Chinese location where the Zhou dynasty was founded way back in the BCE era, the early days of Chinese imperial lines. Also at the same time, he begins using his famous Tenka-Fu-Gusil, which translates as all the realms through force. So at this stage, now is in control of two provinces, which are small but strategically and economically beneficial. And he's making these things which in hindsight we can clearly see are signals of this ambition and a recognition of the primacy of military power. So was he wearing his tiger skin out hunting with the boys in Owati province thinking, you know, one day I'm going to march on Kyoto and rule the entire country? I mean, that's hard to tell, right? But at least by the mid to late 1560s, this is his idea. It's striking that he seems to have such a vision so early on, but also that he's so open about it. He's naming places in a way that clearly establishes a dynasty and he's using a seal that talks about, I'm going to take all of this. Right. Well, it's also hard though. And again, it's easy to see this in hindsight. It's really hard to say, you know, whether his peers at the time in 1567 took note of this in the same way, like people across Japan further away, probably, okay, he took another province and oh, you renamed the city. Okay, great. You know, I don't want to set it up as too dramatic, but certainly whether his peers recognize he had these thoughts, he did. So the victory over Imagawa-jūo Shimoto kind of made his name, but now he has Owari and Mino, which give him a fertile economic base and the two major roads, East, West through Japan. So then he works to consolidate his position by doing some preliminary campaigns into neighboring Issei province and establishing diplomatic relations. So he marries his younger sister, Oiji, to a warlord named Azai Nagamasa who rules northern Omi province. And this is significant because Omi is the province that lies between Mino and Owari, which he owns, and the capital of Kyoto. So he's in essence securing a line of, you know, advance for future endeavors. One thing I want to stress is that for us looking back on it, right, we have a tendency to look at society like Sengoku, Japan as a game board. If you picture the game of risk, every territory is controlled by a warlord who is looking to conquer more and more territory until they control the map and every player has the same goal. But the reality is that most of the time we're just way more concerned with personal survival. Rather than national hegemony, they're trying to expand their domain to prevent others from taking it over. They want the next line of mountains so that they can have a more defensible position and deny that to their neighbor. So they're usually conducting military action to eliminate local rivals, strengthen their immediate position. But given what we just kind of noted about Nobunaga, you know, his renaming of his capital with historical reference to a Chinese dynasty at the Tenko-Fubu seal, we can see that he does have a somewhat more broadly focused goal. But even Nobudana early on had to work with the existing political framework. As fractured as dysfunctional as it was, you couldn't just unilaterally decide to start an entirely new government. So we often have the impression that the imperial court in Kyoto was impotent because it had no independent military or economic power, but it still carried immense political, social, and ritual power. And Nobunaga respected that greatly. Likewise, the Ashikaga shogunate had devolved from a relatively strong central government in, say, around 1400 to a shell of its former self by the mid 16th century when we were talking. But people still thought of it as the legitimate military and political governing structure. The previous shogun, Ashikaga Yoshitero, had been assassinated in 1565 and replaced by a puppet. So Yoshitero's younger brother, a man by the name of Ashikaga Yoshiyaki, had been traveling around the provinces trying to seek a benefactor who would back his claim and help him march on the capital. So shortly after Nobunaga establishes himself in Gifu, Yoshiyaki arrives on his doorstep in 1568, thus giving him a pretext to make his move on the capital. So this is where, you know, how did he get to the point where he was marching towards Kyoto and planning to take control? This is kind of where that comes from. The fact that he can take a legitimate claimant to the Ashikaga shogunate and march on Kyoto with utter the pretext of putting him into power gives him the legitimate of his siege to do so. So November of 1568, he enters Kyoto with his army and installs Yoshiyaki as the 15th Ashikaga shogun. However, here's where things start to differ from what you might have expected at the time, because rather than accept Yoshiyaki's offer to be his deputy shogun, Nobunaga declines that in any other position that Yoshiyaki offers. And we often interpret this as he didn't want to be under the direct authority of the shogun, confined to a specific role. He rather wanted to retain kind of the freedom of action as the real muscle making things happen. It's fascinating that even with all of his ambition and his desire to reunite Japan to some extent, it's been fractured for more than a century. But he's still not looking to sweep away the idea of a shogun and an emperor and a capital in Kyoto. He's not looking to sweep the board clean and start again to reunify Japan. He's looking to rebuild those existing structures to be the scaffold that holds them up and makes them work again. Absolutely. There's a lot of debate between historians about whether he was a revolutionary figure or a conservative figure. Was he trying to establish a new Japan or was he trying to restore an old Japan? And, you know, there's arguments, I think, for both sides. But I think long term what he was trying to do was reestablish central control under his leadership. No question about that. But he did want to reestablish that central authority over all of the territory of Japan at this time and sort of the chaos that we associate with the Senboku period. But to do that, he needed to do some unusual or unprecedented things. He didn't have this vision of a completely revolutionized society sweeping away the imperial institution. He had great respect for the imperial institution, as we'll see. He didn't have very great respect for Ashikaga Yoshiaki in particular and absolutely intended to use him as a puppet to the best of his abilities. But we don't have this figure of, you know, I'm going to completely wipe away the entire old order. He wanted to buttress the previous order and reform it in ways that were sustainable. Rather than whether he was a revolutionary or a conservative, we need to try and work out whether he was a conservative revolutionary or a revolutionary conservative. Right. That's a good way to put it. So given his rejection of a role as a kind of Deputy Shogun or anything official like that, he wants to go off and exercise his own power and authority, no doubt for his own ends. What challenges does he then face to his authority as he becomes more and more of a significant figure in Japan? Well, clearly, you know, when one warlord rises up like this, it's going to engender resentment by others. In 1570, Nomena-nasa is an invitation, sensibly on Yoshiaki's behalf, to local warlords for a reception in Kyoto. And this is almost a way to test who was going to accept his authority and who wasn't. And the daimyo of Ichizen province, Ashikugara Yoshikage, refuses the summons. So Nomenaga launches a campaign to besiege the Asakutta's main castle. But unfortunately for Nomenaga, the Azai, his brother-in-law's family, his brother-in-law being Azai Nogamasa, had a multi-generational alliance relationship with the Asakutta. So Nogamasa feels obligated to go to the Asakutta's aid, and he launches an attack on Nomenaga's army's rear, forcing Nomenaga to break off the siege and retreat while a rear guard held off the Asai and the Asakutta forces. So Nomenaga feels personally betrayed by this man who was a relative by marriage. And the Asai and Asakutta are one of the initial threats that he faces. The two sides meet in July of 1570 at the Battle of Anagawa, where Nomenaga was joined by his ally Tokugawa Iyasu. And they fight this battle in the shallow Anagawa River, both sides plunging into the water to engage the enemy. So if you picture this dramatic battle in this shallow river, Tokugawa, on Nomenaga's right flank, managed to rout the Asakutta and then crash into the flank of the Asai while at the same time Nomenaga sent his reserves around the other flank. And it causes the collapse of the enemy to create victory. But the surviving members of the Asakutta and the Asai forces find refuge on Mount Hie, which is a mountain just to the northeast of the capital. And it's the site of the Enuryakuji Temple, which is the headquarters of the Tendai Sept of Buddhism and a military power in its own right. You know, we think of the stereotypical warrior monks. There's issues with kind of that stereotypical image, as you might expect. So what that matters is that, you know, this was a Buddhist temple that had essentially an army of its own. And so this prevents Nomenaga from cutting off the Asai and the Asakutta forces and completely destroying them. And he has to back off, which as we can gather from Nomenaga's personality, does not particularly make him happy. Another group that around this time rises up to challenge his authority and one that will probably his longest running enemy is what's known as the Ikko Ikki or the Ikko League. This was a confederation of followers of the true Pure Land Sept of Buddhism. And its headquarters was the Ishiyama Honganji, which was located in what is now present day Osaka. But it had groups of adherents called these Ikki or leagues scattered throughout the provinces of central Japan. And in 1570, Nomenaga starts a war with them because the self-defense groups, these Ikki and the Ishiyama Honganji itself resisted political and military control by local warrior rule. In fact, in 1486, the Ikko Ikki of Kaga Province overthrew the local dainyo and ruled the province without any samurai rule for almost 100 years. Nomenaga is obsessed at this point with re-establishing central unified authority. So he sees this as an unacceptable threat. This is a political challenge, not just a military one to him, but a political challenge to the system that he believes in. So for 10 years until 1580, he's in this constant on and off war with the Ishiyama Honganji and their eco-followers in various locations throughout the provinces. And they're really the winchpin of the various coalitions that are opposing Nomenaga. You know, at this point, these are kind of like the main enemies that he's looking at. As we go through his career, he'll have many more coalitions that form mostly around or with the Ikko Ikki Kada as this base that they ally with. But in 1571, he realizes that the only way to solve his problem of encirclement is to break kind of the circle. So he starts with Mount Hiei, the Enuryakuchi temple complex that had given refuge to his enemies. And in the fall, he brings them out and has his troops advance up deliberately. And according to eyewitness accounts from the time that are written down, his troops are killing anything that's alive, whether it be monks, laymen, women, children, reportedly even every animal that's on the mountain. And they burn almost every building of this massive temple complex. This is undoubtedly a brutal act and combined with his war against the Ikko Ikki, it is often used as evidence of his hatred of Buddhism. But I think more recent scholarship looks at it from a more pragmatic standpoint. He didn't really hate Buddhism. He hated Buddhist institutions that did not accept his secular authority. So he punished the monks of the Enuryakuchi and destroyed the complex because they supported his enemies and they didn't recognize his hegemony. And this is typical of his whole career. Of course, his enemies and many onlookers at the time were horrified and saw this as a sacrilegious act. But I do want to caution everybody for reading Tuach Intuit in terms of anti-religion. He was anti anybody who wouldn't submit to Nobunaga. Right? Though this did galvanize some of the opposition against him. This is what draws in the Takeda of Kai province as an enemy, in addition to others. And of course, in addition to the human toll, which is horrific, this is a massive loss of life, but it's also a loss of culture, of history. This was a major religious complex. So it had important documents, texts, artwork that all went up in flames with the exception of one small building that got overlooked. So massive events in both his career, but also in the history of Japan in terms of the loss of information we as historians have. It's one of those striking examples of how someone really significant in a country's history can be such a complex figure that he probably didn't hate the religion. As you say, he saw the political threat, but nevertheless, he did something culturally devastating for his own political ends. Absolutely. And in this, I think we do need to look at him as a pragmatist, but we can still recognize the horror, especially from our modern standpoint, of what some of his actions entail. He was certainly not a merciful man. And if you opposed his authority, he was going to destroy you. That said, I do think it's important as well to keep it in the context of others at this same time would be doing the same things. The burning of temple complexes, especially as a form of political violence, was not unusual. We have many examples of it from Japanese history. So it's easy from the depictions of it sometimes to read that into it. And of course, part of our depictions come from the Portuguese Jesuit missionaries who were there in Japan observing all this. And they're ecstatic that Nobunaga is destroying the Buddhist institutions. So they play that up. And so I think that kind of influences our ideas of, oh, it's against Buddhism. No, he built temples. He supported other religious institutions. It was all political, much more so than any sort of religious idea. He mentioned that he didn't have too much time for Yoshiaki, the man he kind of installed as Shogun. How does that relationship play out in the end? That's a great question. Early assessments of their relationship by historians assume that Nobunaga's plan all along was to use him as a puppet and then throw him away and take power for himself. I agree with more recent biographers, you see it as a little bit more complicated than that. Ashikaga Yoshiaki, obviously, as the Shogun, felt that he should be in charge. So after being installed in 1568, he attempts to rule, but he quickly sees that he cannot do anything without Nobunaga's help. And by 1572, there's some real tension between the two of who's in charge. Nobunaga issued several admonishments, which have been published and are famous, going so far as to note how the people call Yoshiaki the evil Shogun, in scare quotes there, and laying out rules for the Shoban's house to follow. Of course, Yoshiaki takes offense at this and who are you to tell me the Shogun how to run things? And so, like I said, early on, historians looked at this as Nobunaga's overstipping his bow, just trying to push Yoshiaki out. I see a different reading of it that is more compelling to me is that, no, he really saw that this was like the structure that should be in place and was trying to guide Yoshiaki back onto an actual correct path of governance, at least as Nobunaga saw it. And his efforts to maintain relations with Yoshiaki, at least initially, were very sincere. But Yoshiaki is the one who kind of pushes the relationship to the breaking point. And the early 1570s, he's orchestrating coalitions of enemies to move against Nobunaga. In addition to the Iko Iki, he's kind of another lynchpin of the different coalitions against Nobunaga, trying to convince different daimyo to turn against Nobunaga, invade, come rescue me in Kyoto and be my savior and I'll grant you XYZ, so forth. This continues until 1573, when it's very obvious that Nobunaga has run out of patience. In 1573, he does march on Kyoto and expel Yoshiaki, which more or less ends the Ashikaga shogunate for good. And then Ashikaga would escape to Western Japan, where he would take up residence in the lands of one of Nobunaga's enemies, the Mori family. And from there, he would continue to write different daimyo, constantly trying to create a coalition that could overthrow Nobunaga and reinstall him in power. How effective that was? Well, we see that it didn't happen, but he certainly was doing his best the entire time to undermine Nobunaga. He sounds a little bit to me like someone who, even if he wasn't kind of my way or the highway kind of guy, he struggled with people who weren't as gifted and competent and driven as he was. And given that he's possibly one of the most gifted and competent and driven men of his time, kind of no one was able to keep up with him and nobody met with his approval. And he was almost destined to fall out with everybody eventually. In a sense, yes. I mean, it would have been hard, you know, the whole metaphor of you can't have two sons in one sky, right? So eventually, regardless of what Nobunaga wanted, there was going to be a fallout with Yoshiaki, I think, as long as Yoshiaki had any pretensions of actually wielding political power. I think that was one difference between Yoshiaki and say the imperial court, the Emperor Ogimachi at this time, it had been well established by this point that the Emperor was, you know, the head of the imperial court and the sovereign of the nation. But normal day to day political power was delegated to you know, some sort of warrior governing body, one of the previous shogunates or so forth. So that sort of conflict was not present with the imperial court. It's a good question as to whether or not had there been imperial court resistance to Nobunaga, how would he have handled that? How would he have acted? We don't see it. So we don't know. But all of his dealings with the court, he's very deferential is not quite the right word, but he is respectful and shows that he wishes to work with the court. We mentioned whether he is a conservative revolutionary or a revolutionary conservatives, I would say that he was probably a revolutionary conservatives, because he does want to keep the structures in place. He just wants that role as kind of the center of political power. Perhaps it's because he recognizes that he's competent. And many of these others are not that he recognizes he should be the one pulling the strings, right? Who knows? Will Barron Yeah, I guess he struggles to share when nobody else is as good at what he wants to do as he is. We know that Nobunaga would not live to see a united Japan. What happens to him in the end? Andrew You broke her a settlement and a surrender by the Ishiyama Hon-Granji, which ends that. So he really reaches kind of his zenith Nobunaga does in 1580 1581 into 1582. The Takeda family is finally destroyed in 1582. So we're at this total high point. And one of the few remaining enemies in the main island of Japan that he is concerned about is this family called the Mori family. And he's had one of his generals man by the name of Hashida Hideyoshi, who we would later know as Toyotomi Hideyoshi. One of his generals is leading the campaign against them. And having just completed the campaign in the east against the Takeda, he is given notice by Hideyoshi that a siege of a castle is almost complete. But he's worried that Mori reinforcements are going to come. So please send additional reinforcements to me in order to defeat the Mori. There's quite a lot of emphasis on how important this is. And this could be the masterstroke that basically secures Western Honshu for Nobunaga. So he's returned to Kyoto, and Nobunaga sends his retainer Akechi Mitsuhide with Akechi's army as the initial force to go reinforce Hideyoshi out west. And for reasons that are not quite clear, but of course, lead to lots of speculation and dramatic interpretation. Akechi decides that instead of turning west to go support Hideyoshi, he's going to turn his forces east, march into Kyoto, surround the residents of Nobunaga, which is the Honnagi Temple in central Kyoto. It's where he normally took up residence when he was in the city, and attack his own war. We don't really know why we don't really get any full explanation of Akechi's motives. There's lots of speculation that it had to do with resentment at court treatment by Nobunaga. One thing that we do know is that Akechi's mother had been killed by a rival clan where Akechi had given them his mother as a hostage, as insurance essentially against an attack. And Nobunaga superseded that and ordered the attack anyway. So they killed Akechi's mother. Other things are rumors that he was physically abusive and verbally abusive to Mitsuhide personally. You know, how much of this is after the fact storytelling? How much of this is true? I mean, it does kind of fit with Nobunaga's character as we see it. So it's probably, again, a combination of all these above. But for whatever reason, Akechi decides that this is his moment while Nobunaga is lightly guarded. He's certainly not expecting anybody to attack him in Kyoto. They surround Nobunaga's residents, set out on fire. Nobunaga and his guards fight back, but are eventually overwhelmed. Nobunaga commits suicide. And then his heir as well, who was also in Kyoto, is attacked by Akechi's forces and dies. So in one stroke, the Akechi have eliminated, basically decapitated the Oda family and thus ended Nobunaga's career. It seems like an odd end for a man who had so much success against all of his enemies to be brought down by someone he would have considered a friend or an ally, even if he hadn't been particularly good to him. What do you think we should consider to be Nobunaga's legacy? You know, he looms so large over this whole period, yet didn't quite complete his own project. In terms of where Japan would go after his death, what can we see as his legacy? Nobunaga is the first of what are often called the Three Unifiers. We have Nobunaga, then we have Toyotimi Hideyoshi, who kind of picks up the pieces afterwards and carries on the unification of Japan. And then once he dies in 1598, Tokugawa Iyayasu takes over and establishes his own shogunate based in Edo, present day Tokyo. There's the famous saying where Nobunaga planted the seeds, Hideyoshi harvested the rice, and Tokugawa Iyayasu ate the cake. And there's some truth to that. He's trying to establish order and get back to this previous level of centralized control. Do you realize that he can't just do that through winning battles? Things do have to change. So one of the things that he institutes in large scale, though not systematic scale, is land surveys, sending out his administrators to take surveys of the arable land and their rice production yield. What this does is it establishes tax registers, it establishes known income values, and it enables Nobunaga to award rights to the land to his subordinates. And in some ways, assign them or move them based off of income levels, the pieces of land are very modular, and he can move his retainers around underneath him. It's really Toyotimi Hideyoshi after him, who turns it into a systematic evaluation of the entire Japanese realm. But without Nobunaga having started doing that, who's to say Hideyoshi would have been able to do some of the things he did. So that's one. Also this idea from a military standpoint, he's one of the first military commanders who is able to have subordinate commanders in control of their own armies mounting independent campaigns in all directions. And that's something that we don't see before this in the same sort of strategic scale. And then this idea of military force and military being a samurai, and they are the political actors, I think is one of his enduring legacies. He destroys independent non-warrior institutions, with the exception of the Imperial Court. We talked about the Iko Iki and the other religious institutions that he brings under control. This is finished by both Hideyoshi and Ieyasu after him. But it's his notion that everything needs to fall under the central civil authority, and that there's no independent religious or other institutions that really matters. In these ways, these are somewhat revolutionary ideas that his successors bring forward, and have shaped their policies, which of them, of course, shapes the direction of Japan after him. But I think it's saying too much to say that, oh, he was a revolutionary who wanted to make all these changes. All of these changes came in large part as part of his somewhat conservative goal of re-establishing central authority. He's such a fascinating and complex figure who obviously has such a complex legacy to him as well, but such a central part to play in the Japan that we recognize after his life, and probably even up until today. It's been absolutely fascinating to try and get a little bit closer to Oda Nobunaga. So thank you so much for joining us, Nate, and sharing all of that with us. Thank you very much for having me. Thank you for listening to this episode of Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hit. Next time, we'll be heading into the mountains to encounter the Shinobi who fought Oda Nobunaga in the Tenjō-Iga War. How did the samurai fight the ninja? The answer to that just might surprise you. So join us for the next episode to find out more about the history behind the world of Assassin's Creed.