June 17, 1565.
The shogun stares in horror at the scene playing out before him.
A cacophony of crackling fires and screams and clangs of metal assault the night.
New fires erupt as the rebels march towards the main house, torching every building along
the way.
When the traitors finally arrive, they fall upon the shogun’s samurai.
The enemy has the numbers, the outcome is certain.
And still, his guards fight.
Someone breaks through the line and slashes him across the chest before getting cut down.
He retreats into his chambers.
Feeling the end grasp his weakening body, he picks up a brush and writes some shaky
words on a page, a death poem.
Then he plunges the knife into his stomach.
Agony carries the shogun into darkness.
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The shogun was Ashikaga Yoshiteru.
At the time, Japan was under the rule of the Ashikaga shogunate, a military dictatorship.
Yoshiteru was the 13th Ashikaga shogun, and he died during a surprise night attack by
a rival faction in his government.
This murder actually sparked a series of events that culminate in the end of the Ashikaga
shogunate.
And while that’s interesting and all, our story is about something else, as we’ll
see later.
After the attack, the rebels propped up the dead shogun’s distant cousin as a muppet
shogun, making him the 14th Ashikaga shogun.
His name was Ashikaga Yoshihide.
And now you can immediately forget it because he’s not important.
In fact, the shoguns in this story were useless, pawns pushed around by stronger men.
Now the dead shogun had a younger brother, Ashikaga Yoshiaki.
He was annoyed that they killed his elder brother, so annoyed that he fled, vowing to
avenge his brother and take his rightful spot as shogun.
He went around begging for support.
He did find lords who gave him shelter, but no one willing to shed blood for him.
Yoshiaki, pathetic and powerless, eventually wandered into the talons of a young daimyo
named Oda Nobunaga.
At this point in time, Nobunaga’s prowess on the battlefield had already gained him
a reputation, and it’s not a reputation that your mom would approve of.
He couldn’t care less about Yoshiaki’s ambitions.
The only ambitions that mattered were his own, and boy were they big, about as big as
a certain archipelago.
Yoshiaki was going to help him realize those ambitions.
Poor Yoshiaki understood this, of course.
We’re calling him Poor Yoshiaki from now on, by the way.
It was an alliance of convenience, the best kind of alliance.
And so in 1568, 3 years after the 13th Ashikaga shogun was overthrown, Nobunaga marched his
forces to the capital of Kyoto to reclaim the shogun position for Poor Yoshiaki.
However, Nobunaga had a problem.
Between him and Kyoto laid Omi Province.
If you saw the previous video, you’d know about Omi Province.
If you haven’t, check it out already!
Two daimyo ruled Omi Province: Azai Nagamasa in the north and Rokkaku Jotei in the south.
Azai Nagamasa wasn’t a problem, he was Nobunaga’s brother-in-law, and would never attack him.
Rokkaku Jotei, however, declared his support for the current shogun and denied Nobunaga’s
forces safe passage.
Even after a week of negotiation and dangling a Toblerone in front of his face, Jotei didn’t budge.
Being Nobunaga, he thought of another plan, a plan that involved a few dedicated men.
About 60,000 of them.
He marched into Rokkaku territory with 60,000 men and took their castle, then marched right
into Kyoto, as originally intended.
Coincidentally, the sitting shogun died that year from illness.
But it didn’t matter if he had still been living, Nobunaga extinguished all resistance
at Kyoto too.
Poor Yoshiaki became the 15th Ashikaga shogun.
He actually went on to become very famous, famous for being the last Ashikaga shogun.
Now after getting his ass handed to him by Nobunaga, Rokkaku Jotei ran as far away as
his chicken legs could carry him, first to Koka, then all the way up a mountain.
He didn’t stay quiet though, good for him.
Jotei organized a guerilla war against Nobunaga’s forces.
This is when the major players in our story meet.
It is the story of Oda Nobunaga’s campaigns against the warriors of Koka District and
Iga Province.
Koka and Iga answered Jotei’s call and mobilized forces in southern Omi Province.
They became a huge thorn in the side of Nobunaga because Southern Omi was a strategic location.
You had to pass right through it to get to Kyoto from the east.
Being small in number, the Iga and Koka troops engaged in guerilla tactics, quick hit-and-run
raids in the night.
This is what probably gained Iga and Koka the reputation of being ninja clans.
They were not only good at sneak attacks, by all accounts, they were fierce warriors,
adept at all kinds of warfare.
Jotei’s resistance was a big deal, and almost ended Nobunaga’s life.
Under Jotei’s order, a sniper laid in wait for Nobunaga, who was crossing a mountain pass.
He had two matchlock guns ready.
When Nobunaga trotted into range, the sniper fired two bullets in quick succession.
So this sounds easy, right, firing two bullets.
But it wasn’t.
The guns could only fire one bullet at a time, and you had to light the match cord.
So he must’ve had the two guns loaded and lit the matches for both just before Nobunaga
came into range.
Then he must’ve fired once, snatched the second gun, aimed, and fired the second bullet.
It was beautiful.
Unfortunately, Legolas’s bullets either grazed Nobunaga or were stopped by his armor.
Seeing his mission fail, he escaped.
He actually evaded authorities for years before Nobunaga’s men finally caught him.
Nobunaga sentenced him to death, but wanted to devise the method of execution himself,
which is never good news.
Nobunaga’s men buried Legolas up to his shoulders, then left a blunt saw made of bamboo
next to him.
People who walked by were encouraged to slowly saw off his head.
That’s right.
One account of this event wrote,
“Everyone, high and low, was very satisfied with this punishment.”
Indeed.
Back to Jotei.
The resistance was going well, until it wasn’t.
A major battle happened that we don’t have much info on.
What we do know is that the Iga-Koka army was marching along a river when a Nobunaga
force caught them in the open and slaughtered them.
780 Iga and Koka warriors died.
This seems like a really small number, but the Iga-Koka army was small.
It devastated them.
You didn’t hear about them again for another 3 years.
Even with his allies defeated, Jotei continued his fight against Nobunaga.
But he would have been crushed if two things hadn’t happened.
One.
Remember Azai Nagamasa, Nobunaga’s brother-in-law who would never attack him?
He attacked him.
You see, Nobunaga declared war on one of Nagamasa’s allies, and Nagamasa chose to side with his
ally.
Nobunaga’s brother-in-law became his enemy.
Two.
Nobunaga picked a fight with the Ikko-ikki.
People like to call them warrior monks.
They weren’t all monks, of course.
The Ikko-ikki was similar to Iga and Koka in that it was a confederation of people who
resisted the warlords going around the country slapping each other about.
They wanted to stay independent in their own lands.
They followed their own brand of Buddhism.
They had monks, peasants, and yes, jizamurai.
Think of their army like the armies of Iga and Koka.
These people gave Nobunaga a hell of a time, they even killed his brother in one battle.
Seeing the greater threats and not wanting to fight everyone at the same time, Nobunaga
requested a truce with Jotei.
Jotei considered it for about 0.1 seconds before eagerly accepting.
He knew he didn’t stand a chance.
But he wasn’t done with Nobunaga, no way.
The ceasefire allowed his allies in Iga and Koka to recover from their beating.
Three years later, they would rise again to continue their war with Oda Nobunaga.
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