Battle of Nagashino
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The Battle of Nagashino in 1575 took place at Nagashino Castle in the Mikawa of Japan. The castle had been under siege from Takeda Katsuyori; Okudaira Sadamasa, a vassal of Tokugawa Ieyasu, commanded the defending force. The castle was under attack because it threatened Takeda's supply lines.
Both Tokugawa and Oda Nobunaga sent troops to alleviate the siege and Takeda Katsuyori was defeated. The victory of Oda's Western-style tactics and firearms over Takeda's cavalry charge is often cited as a turning point in Japanese warfare; many cite it as the first 'modern' Japanese battle. Ironically, while Takeda's cavalry charge represents the old, traditional, means of warfare, it was invented by his father, Takeda Shingen, less than a generation earlier. Nevertheless, while others had used firearms previously, Oda Nobunaga was the first to conceive of the wooden stockades and rotating volleys of fire which led to a decisive victory at Nagashino.
The Battle
Oda Nobunaga and Tokugawa Ieyasu brought a force of 38,000 men combined, to relieve the siege on the castle. Of Takeda Katsuyori's original 15,000 besiegers, only 12,000 faced the Oda-Tokugawa army in this battle. Oda and Tokugawa positioned their men across the plain from the castle, behind the Rengogawa, a small stream whose steep banks would slow down the cavalry charges for which the Takeda clan was famous.
Seeking to protect his arquebusiers, which he would later become famous for, Oda built a number of wooden stockades, setting up his gunmen to attack the Takeda cavalry in volleys. There were approximately three gunmen for each four Takeda mounted samurai.
Takeda's men emerged from the forest and found themselves 200-400 meters from the Oda-Tokugawa stockades. The short distance, great power of the Takeda cavalry charge, and the heavy rain, which Takeda assumed would render the matchlock guns useless, encouraged him to order the charge.
The horses slowed to cross the stream, and were fired upon as they came within 50 meters of the enemy. Ashigaru spearmen stabbed at any horses that made it past the initial volleys, and samurai, with shorter swords and with spears engaged in single combat with any Takeda warriors who made it past the wooden barricades. By mid-afternoon, the Takeda fled, and were pursued. Takeda suffered a loss of 10,000 men, two-thirds of his original sieging force. Eight of his famous 'Twenty-Four Generals' were killed in this battle.
In film
The Battle of Nagashino and the last years of the Takeda clan are dramatised in Akira Kurosawa's 1980 film Kagemusha (Shadow Warrior). In the film, a wayward thief is recruited to impersonate the dead Takeda Shingen in the years preceding Takeda Katsuyori's defeat at Nagashino.
References
- Turnbull, Stephen (1998). 'The Samurai Sourcebook'. London: Cassell & Co.ja:長篠の戦い