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On the way from Okazaki, which was the stronghold of Hirotada, the party fell into the hands of Nobuhide's officers, and Ieyasu was confined in a temple where he remained until 1559, when he obtained permission to return to Okazaki, being then a vassal of the Imagawa family.
Among the small barons subject to the Imagawa there was one called Matsudaira Motoyasu. He had taken the name, Motoyasu, by adopting one of the ideographs of Yoshimoto's appellation. His family, long in alliance with the Imagawa, were at a variance with the Oda, and in the battle of Okehazama this Motoyasu had captured one of the Owari forts.
Hideyoshi himself figures at this very time as the instigator and director of a series of acts of extreme treachery, by which the death of one of the principal Imagawa vassals was compassed; and the same Hideyoshi was the means of discovering a plot by Imagawa emissaries to delay the repair of the castle of Kiyosu, Nobunaga's headquarters, where a heavy fall of rain had caused a landslide.
Therefore, the partisans of the murdered man placed themselves under the banner of his brother, Fusaaki, and having received a commission from Muromachi as well as a powerful contingent of troops under Imagawa Noritada, they marched in great force against Kamakura from Kotsuke, Kazusa, and Echigo.
The two branches of the Uesugi had joined hands in the presence of the Hojo menace, and a powerful league including the Imagawa and the Ashikaga of Koga, had been formed to attack the Hojo.
Ashikaga Masatomo, seeking to disinherit his eldest son, Chachamaru, in favour of his second son, Yoshimichi, was killed by the former, the latter taking refuge with the Imagawa family in Suruga, by whom he was escorted to the capital, where he became the Muromachi shogun under the name of Yoshizumi.
Ryoshun had been selected for service in Kyushu by the great shitsuji of Muromachi, Hosokawa Yoriyuki, who saw that only by the strongest hands could the turbulent families of the southern island be reduced to order the Shimazu, the Otomo, the Shoni, and the Kikuchi. Everything went to show that Imagawa would have succeeded had not that familiar weapon, slander, been utilized for his overthrow.
Parricides and fratricides were too common in that disturbed age for Chachamaru's crime to cause any moral commotion. But it chanced that among the rear vassals of the Imagawa there was one, Nagauji, who, during many years, had harboured designs of large ambition.
But trouble began very soon. In Kyushu the office of tandai was held by Imagawa Ryoshun, a man ever memorable in Japanese history as the author of the precept that military prowess without education is worse than useless.
Nevertheless, some generally credible records do not hesitate to represent Hideyoshi as taking a prominent part in the great battle against the Imagawa, and as openly advising Nobunaga with regard to the strategy best adapted to the situation.
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