United States or Mayotte ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The province of Owari was guarded on the south by sea, but on the east it was menaced directly by the Imagawa family and indirectly by the celebrated Takeda Shingen, while on the north it was threatened by the Saito and on the west by the Asai, the Sasaki, and the Kitabatake.
A glance at the map shows that the Asai were in a position to sever Nobunaga's communications with his base in Mino, and that the Asakura were in a position to cut off his communications with Kyoto. In this perilous situation Nobunaga's sole resource lay in Tokugawa Ieyasu and in the latter's alliance with the Uesugi, which compact the Owari chief spared no pains to solidify.
The belief in curses hanging over families for generations is as common as that in ghosts and supernatural apparitions. There is a strange story of this nature in the house of Asai, belonging to the Hatamoto class.
When I was attending grammar school, there was one Tami Asai in our class, and his father was just as pale as this Koga. Asai was a farmer, and I asked Kiyo if one's face would become pale if he took up farming. Kiyo said it was not so; Asai ate always Hubbard squash of "uranari" and that was the reason.
Meanwhile and this step also was undertaken under Hideyoshi's advice a friendly contract had been concluded with Asai Nagamasa, the most powerful baron in Omi, and the agreement had been cemented by the marriage of Nobunaga's sister to Nagamasa. In October, 1568, Nobunaga set out for Kyoto at the head of an army said to have numbered thirty thousand.
Hence it became the scene of much disturbance, in which the Hosokawa, the Kyogoku, the Rokkaku, and the Asai families all took part. Finally, in the middle of the sixteenth century, the Asai gained the ascendancy by obtaining the assistance of the Asakura of Echizen.
Success crowned the early efforts of the Owari forces in this war, but the whole situation was changed by Asai Nagamasa, who suddenly marched out of Omi and threatened to attack Nobunaga's rear. It is true that before setting out for Kyoto originally, Nobunaga had given his sister in marriage to Nagamasa, and had thus invited the latter's friendship.
It was this baron that had attacked the palace of Nijo when Yoshiteru, the shogun, had to commit suicide, and Shingen's object in approaching him was to sow seeds of discord between the shogunate and Nobunaga. Most imminent of all perils, however, was the menace of the Asai family in Omi, and the Asakura family in Echizen.
One of the three daughters of Asai Nagamasa afterwards became the concubine of Hideyoshi and bore to him a son, Hideyori, who, by her advice, subsequently acted in defiance of Ieyasu, thus involving the fall of the house of Hideyoshi and unconsciously avenging the fate of Nobunaga.
The Asai sept received assistance from no less than ten temples in Omi; the Asakura family had the ranks of its soldiers recruited from monasteries in Echizen and Kaga; the Saito clan received aid from the bonzes in Izumi and Iga, and the priests of the great temple Hongwan-ji in Osaka were in friendly communication with the Mori sept in the west, with the Takeda in Kai, and with the Hojo in Sagami.
Word Of The Day