Remember how last time
we left off with Oda Nobunaga seizing Kyoto
and installing Ashikaga Yoshiaki as Shogun?
Well, you see, there turned out to be
one small problem with that.
Yoshiaki actually thought he was going to get to be Shogun.
Nobunaga, on the other hand, was pretty sure
that if anybody was going to be ruling Japan,
it was going to be Nobunaga.
So, with this in mind,
trouble started after a scant few months in Kyoto.
Nobunaga made Yoshiaki send letters
to all the surrounding daimyo,
inviting them to take dinner with him.
Unfortunately, Yoshiaki had already
started to send out secret letters of his own to nearby clans,
inviting them to come liberate Kyoto
from the hands of the wicked usurper Nobunaga.
So you can see how this dinner invitation might
seem suspicious to some people.
And the head of the Asakura, one of the powerful nearby clans,
saw through this offer of an evening snack from Yoshiaki,
realizing that Nobunagun was behind the whole thing,
and decided it was a trap.
Of course, because the invitation had
technically been from Yoshiaki and not Nobunaga,
when the Asakura refused,
Nobunagun declared them traitors to the Shogun,
and declared war on them.
A bit much over a dinner party, but, hey.
And so it was on.
Nobunagun marches his forces out of Kyoto
to crush the rebellious Asakura.
But to get to the Asakura lands,
he has to march through Azai territory.
If you're Nobunaga, you're thinking: "Of course, no problem."
After all, if you remember from our last episode,
Nobunaga's sister was married to the lord of Azai.
Whop Whop
So yeah, of course, as soon as Nobunaga and Tokugawa's forces
have gotten to Asakura territory,
the Azai decide that, eh, what the heck,
they have known the Asakura for longer,
now is a good time to revolt.
So now Oda's forces are trapped between two powerful clans.
The Azai's have cut off their retreat to the rear,
and the Asakura are in front of them.
The supply lines are in ruins, they're outnumbered.
So what they do?
Well, Nobunaga's first response was to
FIGHT EVERYBODY
but luckily his generals convinced him
that they could split the army
and safely slip away by the back roads.
And here you've got to give Nobunaga credit.
One of the reasons that he succeeded
where so many others failed,
was that he was always playing to win.
He was willing to take a desperate gamble
if it was the only chance he had,
but he wasn't a man who acted rashly or out of temper.
But, oh man, let me tell you,
he was pissed.
He withdraw, but he was going to
kill his brother-in-law.
No, literally, he was really going to kill his brother-in-law.
But it gets worse.
The Oda column is sneaking through forests back roads,
Nobunagun cursing loudly about the treacherous Azai,
when suddenly, there's a noise from one of the trees.
A ninja: Sugitani Zenjubo, has been lying in wait for them.
He fires his first shot from an arquebus,
tosses it aside,
and fires a second shot from another arquebus he had primed and ready.
Both hit home.
Nobunaga's thrown from his horse,
chaos erupts.
Sugitani Zenjubo fleas,
but his job wasn't done.
Nobunaga stands up,
both bullets having lodged themselves in his armor.
And if you thought Nobunagun was mad before,
Ho ho, boy!
So, with an assassination attempt behind him,
Nobunagun makes it back to Kyoto.
And over the next two months,
he rallies his forces.
Now with Tokugawa and Hideyoshi at his side,
it's time for him to return to Azai,
and teach them what it means to betray Oda Nobunaga.
It is now July of 1570.
The combined Tokugawa and Oda forces
have marched into Azai land.
They moved to threaten one of the main Azai castles.
But they're met at the Onagawa river
by the combined armies of the Azai and the Asakura.
The Azai line up on the east to face the Tokugawa forces,
and the Asakura line up on the west to face the Oda.
The stage is set for an epic...
Wait...no...hold on,
Nobunagun wants to switch it up first.
The night before the battle,
when he sees the Azai flags to the east,
he switches his whole line around, so his army is facing the Azai,
while Tokugawa handles the Asakura.
Because nobody kills Nobunaga's brother-in-law
except Oda Nobunaga.
So now, in the dim twilight hours of the morning,
the battle begins,
with samurais struggling in the knee deep water of the Anegawa.
Steel ringing on steel, waters running red,
Nobunaga's forces are barely able to hold their own,
pushed back inch by inch by the fury of the Azai assault.
Enemy samurai almost reach Oda Nobunaga himself,
only to be cut down at the last minute
before they can deal the killing blow.
but Ieyasu's forces are faring much better.
And just as it looks as though the Oda forces might collapse,
the Tokugawa push back the Asakura,
and Ieyasu detaches a division
to slam into the Azai flank.
The Azai start to disintegrate.
Nobunaga is saved, and the day is won.
But the Oda forces are in too ragged shape to pursue,
and so they withdraw to Kyoto.
Seeing the desperate shape the Oda troops are in,
another clan: the Miyoshi,
the clan that Nobunaga initially kicked out of Kyoto,
decided it was time to get their's back,
and aligned themselves with the Ikko-Ikki - warrior monks,
who held a nearby temple fortress of Ishiyama Hongan-ji.
Now, have you noticed how everyone's coming at Nobunaga piecemeal?
If the Azai, the Asakura, the Ikko-Ikki, and the Miyoshi,
had all worked together,
they could have crushed the Oda.
But this is one of the key characteristics of the age.
This whole period is a catalog of people
living in a state of mutual distrust.
This is why the Oda-Tokugawa Alliance is so important.
Having just one ally that he could consistently count on
gave Oda Nobunaga an enormous advantage,
and allowed him to mop up the rest of the clans one by one.
Which brings us back to the Miyoshi and the Ikko-Ikki.
The Miyoshi are sort of a historical footnote,
But the Ikko-Ikki are something we've got to talk about .
These guys were militant Buddhist.
And when I say militant, I mean these guys were able
to kick an entire samurai clan out of the Kaga province,
and just take it over for a hundred years.
To put that in perspective,
this was the only province in all of Japan
not to be ruled by samurai at that time.
These guys scared the heck out of Oda Nobunaga and Tokugawa Ieyasu.
In fact, they were probably the biggest obstacle
between Oda Nobunaga and unifying all of Japan.
Luckily, for Nobunaga and Ieyasu,
these warrior monks were more of a
loose coalition than a unified group.
Suffering from the same distrust and fragmentation
that afflicted the rest of the country.
Now, in this case,
the warrior monks giving the Oda trouble,
were from the temple of Ishiyama Hongan-ji.
A vast fortress complex at the mouth of the Yodo river.
Nobunaga sallied out with 30,000 men to reduce the temple.
He had to. You see, the thing about the Ikko-Ikki,
was that they weren't a clan.
They didn't follow the same rules of territory.
A samurai clan had its domain,
and if anybody entered it,
well, that meant war.
but the Ikko-Ikki were monks.
Which meant that, sure, they had their province of Kaga,
but they basically set up their temples wherever they please.
After all, it's hard to stop your own peasants
from building a nice peaceful temple in your province.
And this temple: Ishiyama Hongan-ji,
was just south of Kyoto - where Osaka is today.
These monks had been refusing to pay taxes, disrupting trade,
and generally just being a nuisance for some time.
Nobunaga couldn't have them deep in his territory
while he tried to conquer Japan.
And now that they've allied with his enemies,
well, it was time for all-out war.
Oo Nobunaga raced south,
and his 30,000 men surrounded the temple.
The order to attack was given.
they tried to charge forward
but the marshy land around the temple dragged at them.
They sunk into the tidal flats,
weighed down by their heavy armor.
Their feet sucked down by the muddy ground,
got trapped in pots that the monks had buried in the wet soil.
Then, gun-monks.
Yes, three thousand elite monk arquebusiers
came to ruin Nobunaga's day.
And Nobunaga learned what everybody else who had tried
to dislodge the monks of Ishiyama Hongan-ji had learned.
Ishiyama Hongan-ji was impregnable.
For 11 more years,
Nobunaga's men would camp around Ishiyama Hongan-ji,
making it the longest siege in Japanese history.
No castle defended by samurai,
no daimyo's fortress ever held out
as long as these peasant monks.
But no sooner had Nobunaga's offensive
against the Ishiyama Hongan-ji stalled,
then he learned that the Azai and the Asakura were back in it.
Coming after him with the warrior monks of Enryaku-ji.
You see what I mean about Buddhist monks
actually being Nobunaga's strongest opposition?
Well, Enryaku-ji was a fortified monastery
on top of Mount Hiei.
Wait...Mount Hiei?
Come on, this one is practically in Kyoto.
That's it!
Nobunaga bites his pride,
and makes a truce with the Azai and the Asakura.
It's time to deal with some monks.
Now the story of Mount Hiei is actually a tragic one.
Nobunaga's learned from his experience at Ishiyama Hongan-ji.
He wasn't going to try to assault one of
these impregnable temples again.
Instead, he sets his men to encircle the mountain,
and then on his command,
He had them light the tree line ablaze.
As the fire roared up the mountain and started to consume
the temple at summit in Enryaku-ji,
Oda Nobunaga gave the order
to slaughter every man, woman, and child,
fleeing from the burning temple
20,000 people died on that day,
and all of Japan learned what kind of man
Oda Nobunaga really is.
In our next episode,
things get grim for Tokugawa Ieyasu,
and one of the most famous ninja in history
enters our story.