On the Road: Noubi sansu ki (Gifu/Nagoya/Shizuoka)

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Summary

Travel is an act for human beings to visit new places and experience different cultures and histories. Through travel, people can actually feel historical events and people’s lives by visiting historical places and cultural heritage sites, and can gain a deeper understanding of history and broaden their own perspectives. In this section, we will discuss the historical background of the trip and the places visited based on Ryotaro Shiba’s “Kaido yuku” (On the Road) about this journey and history.

Kaidou wo yuku Volume 43 Noubisansyuki.

In the previous article, I described a trip to Echizen, Fukui Prefecture. This time, we will travel in the vicinity of Nagoya City, Aichi Prefecture. “Nobunaga Nobunaga’s Road to Nagoya,” starts at Nagoya Castle. Thinking of the young Nobunaga Oda’s miraculous victory in his raid on Okehazama, and recalling Nobunaga’s movements, the road follows the path that Nobunaga ran to raid Yoshimoto Imagawa, passing Atsuta Shrine. Also in Midori Ward, Nagoya City, we will look down on Okehazama from Midori High School in Nagoya City. Next, we will visit Fujita Health Care University in Okehazama, visit the descendants of ophthalmologists at Mashima Meigan-in, a temple and eye hospital rebuilt in the Muromachi period, and then go to Kotoku-in at the Okehazama ancient battlefield.

Next, we will visit Mikawa and go to Matsudaira-go, where Tokugawa Ieyasu’s ancestors were based. This is the family temple of the Matsudaira clan. In Okazaki City, the tour will be reminded of the legend of Hideyoshi Toyotomi and Koroku Hachisuka, which is related to the Yahagi Bridge over the Yahagi River, and of Ieyasu Tokugawa, who used Okazaki as his base of operations.

The three provinces of Nobi Sanzu were Bishu (Owari), Sanshu (Mikawa), and Konoshu (Mino). Of these, Owari was the domain of Oda Nobunaga, Mikawa was ruled by Tokugawa Ieyasu, and Mino was ruled by Saito Dosan. The journey begins in Nagoya, a short distance from Nagoya Station, where construction is underway to go underground.

The Nagoya Station of the Linear Shinkansen Line is an underground space 30 to 40 meters below the surface of the earth, and with the addition of upper and lower crossing lines and other facilities, the station is 860 meters long and up to 60 meters wide, with the Linear Shinkansen line passing under the station.

Nagoya Castle is located approximately 3 km from the station.

Nagoya Castle was originally built by Ujichika Imagawa, the governor of Suruga Province, and was taken by Nobuhide, father of Nobunaga Oda, who called it Nakono Castle.

The Imagawa clan was a feudal lord with Sunpu, now Shizuoka City, as its capital for generations, and with Suruga and En’e domains under its influence in Mikawa, and was a branch of the Ashikaga family, the shoguns who established the Muromachi shogunate. The Imagawa family was also a candidate for the Oda Shogun’s nomination.

The Imagawa family was also the third in the line of nominees for the Shogun, as it was said that “If the Kira family fails to succeed the Kira family, the Imagawa family will succeed the Kira family. The first warlord of the Warring States period is called Ise Souzui (Hojo Soun) described in “On the Road – Miura Peninsula Chronicles“. Soun Hojo was the younger brother of Ujichika’s mother, Lady Kitagawa, and was an uncle/nephew of Ujichika. This story is described in detail in the manga “Shinkuro Boru“.

Yoshimoto Imagawa Yoshimoto, the son of Ujichika Imagawa, further expanded his father’s Suruga domain and became a feudal lord who controlled the neighboring areas, including the consolidation of the Mikawa domain of the Tokugawa (then Matsudaira) family. Yoshimoto’s mother was a court noblewoman in Kyoto, and he had a strong sense of himself as a court noble (it is said that he was aware of his role in foreign affairs), so he did not shave his head in the manner of a court noble at the time: he wore his hair in the style of a court noble, with his eyebrows shaved, and his eyebrows placed above his head, his teeth dyed with iron plaster, and light makeup.

 

Despite his appearance, he was not afraid to use military force, and was known as “the best archer on the Kaido” for his aggressive military control of the area surrounding his fief. He was also a daimyo with excellent diplomatic skills, skillfully forming alliances with powerful feudal lords such as Shingen Takeda, as described in “On the Road to Koyasan (Yukimura Sanada and Kukai)” and Ujiyasu Hojo, grandson of Sawayun Hojo, who was engaged in a territorial dispute with them.

Yoshimoto Imagawa attacked with 25,000 troops to defeat his last remaining opponent, Oda Nobunaga (Oda Nobunaga’s army at that time was 2,000 to 3,000 troops, which was about 10 times his strength), but was defeated by Oda Nobunaga with 1/10th of his army in the Battle of Okehazama (1560).

At that time, Yoshimoto Imagawa was trying to annihilate Nobunaga Oda’s forces at once, so he dispersed his troops and had them attack castles individually (Ieyasu Tokugawa was also responsible for attacking castles on the Oda side as an Imagawa force), the road was narrow in the mountains at Okehazama, and there were only about 300 soldiers posted around the area, and it was raining on the day, The rain on the day of the battle also helped to eliminate any sign of the approaching army, and various other factors contributed to Oda Nobunaga’s army defeating Imagawa Yoshimoto and subsequently leading to the unification of Japan by Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi.

Ryotaro Shiba and his party followed this route of Oda Nobunaga’s Battle of Okehazama. Nobunaga Oda left Kiyosu Castle, his residence, at around 4:00 a.m. at dawn and arrived at Atsuta Shrine at around 8:00 a.m.

There, after rallying his forces and praying at Atsuta Shrine for victory, he entered Maejoji Fort (present-day Midori-ku, Nagoya) at around 10:00 a.m., and at around 1:00 p.m., in a heavy rainstorm that obscured his view, he surprised Yoshimoto’s main army at Okehazama, killing Yoshimoto Imagawa. The Imagawa forces were roused by the battle at Okehazama, and the remaining units retreated toward Suruga. Furthermore, the Oda forces gained momentum by defeating the Imagawa forces and wiped out the remaining forces, including Ieyasu Tokugawa, who was then attacking Oda.

In Midori-ku, Nagoya City, Ryotaro Shiba and his party looked down on Okehazama from Midori High School in Nagoya City. Next, they visited Fujita Health University in Okehazama, visited the descendants of ophthalmologists at Majima Meigan-in, a temple and eye hospital rebuilt in the Muromachi period, and then went to Kotoku-in, the site of the Okehazama ancient battlefield.

The group then traveled to Mikawa to Matsudaira-go, where Tokugawa Ieyasu’s ancestors were based, and visited Kogetsuin, a family temple of the Matsudaira clan,

In Okazaki City, the trip ends with the legend of the encounter between Hideyoshi Toyotomi and Koroku Hachisuka on the Yahagi Bridge over the Yahagi River and Tokugawa Ieyasu, who used Okazaki as his base of operations.

In the next article, we will discuss the Mongolian travelogue.

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