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Battle of Nagashino
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The took place in 1575 near Nagashino Castle on the plain of Shitaragahara in the Mikawa province of Japan. The castle had been under siege by Takeda Katsuyori since the 17th of June; Okudaira Sadamasa, a Tokugawa vassal, commanded the defending force. The castle was under attack because it threatened Takeda's supply lines.
Both Tokugawa Ieyasu and Oda Nobunaga sent troops to alleviate the siege and Takeda Katsuyori was defeated.
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The took place in 1575 near Nagashino Castle on the plain of Shitaragahara in the Mikawa province of Japan. The castle had been under siege by Takeda Katsuyori since the 17th of June; Okudaira Sadamasa, a Tokugawa vassal, commanded the defending force. The castle was under attack because it threatened Takeda's supply lines.
Both Tokugawa Ieyasu 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. In fact, the cavalry charge had been introduced only a generation earlier by Takeda's father, Takeda Shingen. Furthermore, firearms had already been used in other battles. Oda Nobunaga's innovation was 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 total force of 38,000 men to relieve the siege on the castle by Takeda Katsuyori. Of Takeda's original 15,000 besiegers, only 12,000 faced the Oda-Tokugawa army in this battle. The 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 known.
Seeking to protect his arquebusiers, which he would later become famous for, Nobunaga built a number of wooden stockades, setting up his gunners to attack the Takeda cavalry in volleys. The stockades served to blunt the force of charging cavalry, provide protection from sword blows and spear thrusts, and provide limited protection from arrows. Ports or gates in the staggered and overlapping stockades were positioned to channel the cavalry charges into lanes where they would be at a disadvantage to further gunfire, arrows, and sword and spear thrusts from the stockade's defenders. There were also approximately three gunmen for every four Takeda mounted samurai. Of Oda's forces, an estimated 1,000-1,500 troops were samurai arquebusiers (while most sources in English list 3,000 as the number of arquebusiers, the vast majority of Japanese historians now agree that the document used as a source for the number of guns deployed had the original number of 1,000 altered by an Edo period Tokugawa family historian to read as 3,000) and they were placed under the command of his horo-shu, or elite bodyguards. Oda sent out small forces against Takeda to feint frontal attacks, which caused Katsuyori to move against Oda's forces.
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 Katsuyori assumed would render the matchlock guns useless, encouraged him to order the charge. Takeda's cavalry was feared by both the Oda and Tokugawa forces, who had suffered a defeat at the Battle of Mikatagahara.
The horses slowed to cross the stream, and were fired upon as they crested the streambed within 50 meters of the enemy. This was considered the optimum distance to penetrate the armor of the cavalry. In typical military strategy, the success of any cavalry charge depends on the infantry breaking ranks so that the cavalry can mow them down. If the infantry does not break, however, cavalry charges will often fail - with even trained warhorses refusing to advance into the solid ranks of opponents.
Between the ferocity of the arquebusiers’ attack and the rigid control of the horo-shu, the arquebusiers stood their ground, and were able to fire multiple volleys at the charging cavalry. Ashigaru spearmen stabbed through or over the stockades at any horses that made it past the initial volleys, and samurai, with swords and shorter spears, engaged in single combat with any Takeda warriors who made it past the wooden barricades. Strong defenses on the ends prevented the Takeda forces from flanking the stockades. By mid-afternoon, the Takeda broke, fled, and were pursued and cut-down without quarter. According to Shincho-Koki, Takeda suffered a loss of 10,000 men, two-thirds of his original sieging force. However this figure is excessively high, and is most likely an exaggeration. Other contemporary sources gives a number of 1000 killed in battle and another 2000 during the rout, and this seems much more likely. Eight of his famous 'Twenty-Four Generals' were killed in this battle, including Baba Nobuharu, Yamagata Masakage, and Naito Masatoyo.
The Effects
The Battle of Nagashino could very well be considered a turning point in Japanese history. Although they had participated in battles, the emerging arquebusier were seen as largely unimportant due to the unreliable type of guns of the time (For example, the arquebuses tended to have a drastic recoil, they took a long time to load unless using the 'continuous fire' (countermarch) strategy (where one line would shoot and reload while the next line shot), when wet the guns were near useless, and the weapons tended to get overheated or parts would break off because of clogged gunpowder resulting in explosions of metal and wood in the face of the gunners themselves). After the Battle of Nagashino, arquebuses became a standard military asset in Japanese warfare. Though still rather faulty, the arquebus had proven that it could be very useful.
The defeat of the famous Takeda cavalry also signified a change in the general style of warfare, away from the more 'chivalric' cavalry combats and a melee-weapon infantry to a less personal, more industrialised warfare depending on advanced equipment and new tactics as much as on personal valor.
Dispute
The cavalry charge as shown in film and literature might not have happened at all. Arabian horses were not introduced into Japan until the 1800s. The Japanese domestic horses were not much bigger than donkeys. In the 1990s, a Japanese historian conducted a test and found that the Japanese domestic horse breed could not run faster than a human being and would not have been able to carry out any effective charge, although there are disputes about this test as well since the horse which was used in the test never received any training on carrying an armored rider. However, evidence suggests that cavalry in this period were used for flanking attacks and pursuit, and full-frontal charges like that of European Knights with armored horses were very rare, and considering that the fortifications were quite visible, any cavalry charge would clearly have been suicidal. Also, the fact that the battle continued for more than 8 hours brings doubt to the cavalry charge theory. If there really were a full frontal cavalry charge which was decimated by arquebus fire, the battle would not have lasted for that long.
The literature that described the charges was not written until the 1700s, 200 years after the event, and was most likely romanticized for the benefit of the Tokugawa Shogunate. The wartime record indicated that the Oda and Tokugawa forces had employed tactics such as concentrated attacks on Takeda's generals and heavy field fortification.
Further evidence that Japanese armed forces lacked an able cavalry force appeared in the subsequent war in Korea in the 1590s, as the Ming Chinese cavalry was unmatched in almost every engagement.
On the other hand, the largest proportion of nearly every samurai army of this period was dedicated to ashigaru armed with yari (pikes). This would suggest that cavalry was indeed a very potent force in samurai warfare which needed to be defended against, as demonstrated at the Battle of Mikatagahara, where a Takeda cavalry charge easily overran Tokugawa's unprepared forces. Also, the alleged 'actual' tactics of concentrated attacks on Takeda generals and heavy field fortification correspond with the wooden stockades and reported casualties in the standard account.
Modern adaptions
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. At the end of the film, the thief witnesses the battle and at its end he is the last one to hold up the Takeda banner.
Video games
The Battle of Nagashino is a large focus of many PlayStation 2 games, predominantly Koei's Kessen III and Samurai Warriors. If Shingen is the playable character in Samurai Warriors, there is a 'what-if' situation which examines what would have happened if he had not died: Shingen successfully reads the feint, and does not charge. It then starts raining, rendering the arquebuses worthless except as clubs. Only then would the Takeda cavalry charge, completely routing the Oda-Tokugawa. Likewise, this can be done in Uesugi Kenshin's Story in Samurai Warriors 2 where due to a historical tangent, Kenshin joins the living Shingen at Nagashino. (Although perhaps ironically or humorously, in at least one version of SW2's raining at Nagashino, Nobunaga responds by ordering his arquebusiers: "Simply use your rifles to beat them to death.")
The battle is recreated in the strategy game, Shogun: Total War, with the player taking control of Oda Nobunaga's troops. If players recreate Nobunaga's strategy utilizing Ashigaru spearmen and arquebusiers, they can defeat the powerful Takeda cavalry charge.
External links
See also
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