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Updated: June 14, 2025
I will only say that, humanly speaking, what has above all given great credit and reputation to the fathers is the great favour Nobunaga has shown for the Company." It is not to be supposed, however, that Nobunaga's attitude towards the Jesuits signified any belief in their doctrines.
One of Nobunaga's generals fled; another died in battle, and Ieyasu barely escaped into the castle, which he saved by a desperate device leaving the gates open and thus suggesting to the enemy that they would be ambushed if they entered.
But Nobunaga, disregarding this promise, put the Hatano brothers to the sword, and the latter's adherents avenged themselves by slaughtering Mitsuhide's mother. The best informed belief is that this incident converted Mitsuhide into Nobunaga's bitter enemy, and that the spirit of revenge was fostered by insults to which Nobunaga, always passionate and rough, publicly subjected Mitsuhide.
The ease with which this feat was accomplished and the expediency of maintaining the sequence of successes induced Hideyoshi to propose that the subjugation of the whole of central Japan should be entrusted to him and that he should be allowed to adopt Nobunaga's second son, Hidekatsu, to whom the rule of Chugoku should be entrusted, Hideyoshi keeping for himself only the outlying portions.
This rapid promotion made him Nobunaga's debtor, but a shocking event, which occurred in 1577, seems to have inspired him with the deepest resentment against his patron. Mitsuhide, besieging the castle of Yakami in Tamba province, promised quarter to the brothers Hatano, who commanded its defence, and gave his own mother as hostage.
Returning to Owari, he obtained admission to the ranks of Oda Nobunaga in the humble capacity of sandal-bearer. He deliberately chose Nobunaga through faith in the greatness of his destiny, and again the reader of Japanese history is confronted by ingenious tales as to Hideyoshi's devices for obtaining admission to Nobunaga's house.
The death of the peasant premier left Iyeyasu, the second in ability of Nobunaga's great generals, as the rising power in Japan. Hideyoshi, in the hope of preserving the rule in his own family, had married his son, a child of six, to Iyeyasu's granddaughter, and appointed six ministers to act as his guardians. He did not count, in cherishing this illusory hope, on the strength of human ambition.
In the history of Japan only one instance of this kind appears, that of one born a peasant who supplanted the noble families and became lord of the people and the emperor alike. Such a man was Hideyoshi, the one of Nobunaga's generals who bore the popular nickname of "Cotton," from his fertility of resources and his varied utility to his chief.
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.
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.
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