"Kirin ga kuru" NHK Taiga Drama Guide's Overview!

So, as I mentioned you before, this past year I managed to collect the three guide books of Kirin ga kuru. To be honest I was disappointed by its conclusion just like you guys, but at the same time I really enjoyed following this drama during those troubled years back then, and I really enjoyed its original portrait of Nobunaga-- So I decided to get them for my collection. In this short, filled-with-pictures post I'd like to browse through its contents, sharing some infos and considerations about its controversial portrait of Nobunaga.

Take this first post of the year as a belated San Silvestro ritual where we pay our last homage to Sometani Nobunaga by throwing him out of the window to get ready to welcome the upcoming Nobunagas of 2023!

The Declaration of Ying Zheng in "Kingdom"! A Nobunaga in retrospective?!

The First Emperor of China is one of those historical figures that reminds me a lot of Nobunaga.
As a very amauterish fan of Chinese history, I'm following the anime Kingdom and this peculiar scene from last episode, where Ying Zheng replied to the urging of treacherous minister Lu Buwei on how to stop the wars ripping their kingdom apart since centuries ago, gave me strong Nobunaga vibes--

NOBUNAGA BIRTHDAY PROJECT ⑤ Some Insight into Nobunaga's Parents

Inspired by the online event of Nagoya Omotenashi Bushotai dedicated to the birthday of Nobunaga past year, I decided to join the celebrations this year too, providing a new post dedicated to Nobu every week, until June 23 😄 ^{Source: 日本歴史紀行}
In the previous contributions I investigated the figure of Nobunaga thought his reputations and the symbology suggested by his character. In these last articles, I'll indulge myself in some historical speculations concerning Nobunaga's origins. Here I talk about his parents and his family situation, included the interpretations in literature and movies.

NOBUNAGA BIRTHDAY PROJECT ④ The Symbols of Nobunaga

Inspired by the online event of Nagoya Omotenashi Bushotai dedicated to the birthday of Nobunaga past year, I decided to join the celebrations this year too, providing a new post dedicated to Nobu every week, until June 23 😄 Inspired by the book Shinchou Meikan, I took one of its article as the foundation for a few personal considerations concerning the "famous symbols" that make us think immediately of Nobunaga. Well, besides killing a cuckoo and pounding the mochi, of course 😁

"Shincho Meikan" Review! And a few additions∼

I finally got my copy of the Shincho Meikan, the complete archive of Nobunaga's depictions from 1583 to-- yesterday! I'm still in the middle of browsing it, but I already checked its contents and mini-columns... There's lots of blissful suggestions to peruse for my Nobunaga Birthday Project ♥

NOBUNAGA BIRTHDAY PROJECT ③ Let's Pound the Tenka Mochi!

Inspired by the online event of Nagoya Omotenashi Bushotai dedicated to the birthday of Nobunaga past year, I decided to join the celebrations this year too, providing a new post dedicated to Nobu every week, until June 23 😄 Following the trail of thoughts from past week, today we're talking about this "irreverent" ukiyo-e by Utagawa Yoshitora!

NOBUNAGA BIRTHDAY PROJECT ② Nobunaga and the Cuckoo

Inspired by the online event of Nagoya Omotenashi Bushotai dedicated to the birthday of Nobunaga past year, I decided to join the celebrations this year too, providing a new post dedicated to Nobu every week, until June 23 😄For today's contribution I kept fiddling around with the King of Zipangu guidebook, this time focusing on the "Cuckoo Poem" that opens the previously analyzed article, that so effectively describes the Three Unifiers of Japan.
Browsing the web about it, I decided to share what I found about it online.

NOBUNAGA BIRTHDAY PROJECT ① Nobunaga's Reputation

Inspired by the online event of Nagoya Omotenashi Bushotai dedicated to the birthday of Nobunaga past year, I decided to offer my own celebration this year, providing a new post dedicated to Nobu every week, starting today May 12 to June 23 😄 For this first post, I retrieved an interesting article from the guidebook of the taiga drama King of Zipangu dedicated to what people said about Nobunaga, and how these impressions from other people contributed to his modern "reputation".
I translated roughly the part about the "contemporaries of Nobunaga" and offered a commentary∼

Nobunaga as Mona Lisa: the Curse of the Icon

--Have you heard of the Prado's Mona Lisa? Basically, that's a copy of the painting in Louvre, attributed to one of Leonardo's students, probably Andrea Salai.
The painting is interesting, because, after a recent restauration, it showed many similarities to the "original", making people realize that the French Mona Lisa looked like that because the original colours were somehow altered by the centuries.

The idea of restoring Mona Lisa was always somehow ostracized by the curators, though: first, because cleaning up the varnish stratifications could damage the work, then because the treatment would alter the original colors anyway. Others comments, though, made people think that Mona Lisa would never be restored because now her "dirty look" is what makes her "an icon", and the reason why visitors love it and "recognize" it.

What Would Nobunaga Do?

The idea for this post came from fellow Nobu-enthusiast Davide who contacted me asking for an illustration about Nobunaga coming back to our age and dealing with current events.
What would be his reaction, what would he do to "fix" things..?
This isn't a new question, as we can see from the thousand time-travelling anime that feature Nobunaga in the present in various forms and situations. There's an anime where Nobunaga was revived in the body of a cute teenager girl, for example, or a manga where he is the current Prime Minister of Japan.
Even Les on his book about Okehazama wonders about Nobunaga's strategy against international terrorism that he feels so similar to Ikko Ikki dudes, and I can see the standard Japanese getting nostalgic about Sengoku Era and its genuine lifestyle, even if it meant dying young and in miserable conditions, maybe by the hands of their own kin.

So, you know, while drawing, I wondered. And going past the stereotypes of the ruthless conqueror and the demonic warlord, I seriously asked myself: "What would Nobunaga do?"
And I found my very own answer: he would enjoy himself.

"Appunti di Bellezza" Exhibition

So, a few days ago I was visiting an exhibition of Japanese Dolls in Rome, when I noticed a flyer promoting an interesting event dedicated to the celebrations of the 150 years of diplomatic relationships between Italy and Japan-- My Nobu-radar blinked furiously as I recognized his kamon on the flyer, and so two days later I was in lovely Urbino to visit the exhibition and, fortunately, have a nice talk with one of the artists, Paola Ghirotti.

"Tenka Fubu": when Good Government becomes a Weapon

The motto that Nobunaga came with after his victory in Mino, "Tenka Fubu" is planetary famous, but sometimes its real meaning comes a bit subdued by its implicitly aggressive tones.
Roughly translated as "Unification by Military Rule", it's usually assumed that Nobunaga considered war and aggression as a political statement, a bit like the Roman Empire, that based on war and territorial annexion his purpose and sustenance.
This is, under obvious aspects, true, but it's simplicistic and kinda idiotic to limit the acumen of Nobunaga's government over war alone.
Truth is, if we pay a little more attention to what Nobunaga's social and urbanistic improvement meant, we could find where the modernity of Nobunaga's mindset really was: the use of politics as a weapon.
One of the first economical policies introduced by Nobunaga is the famous rakuichi rakuza (楽市楽座, lit. "Comfortable Market*, Comfortable Guild"), that allowed free distribution and commerce of goods in the provinces controlled by his autority.

Oda Nobumasa, the "Gary Stu" of Edo

Frequently, when talking about Nobunaga's "Demon feats" with people, I couldn't help but ending to repeat "This is probably some Edo fabrication" at least a thousand times for each word, and I know that when I do my listeners tend to hate me, as if I'm "spoiling" their favourite character from a fanfiction.
Truth is, that much about what we consider "historical facts" of Sengoku Era are pretty much legends or details coming straight from popular fiction of the Edo era. One of these examples are the kabuki plots: everytime you hear about Nobunaga beating Mitsuhide, or making him do humiliating things, keep in mind that that's probably some scene from a play.

You can tell that Edo period did to Sengoku era what the Reinassance did to classic culture and what Humanism did to Reinassance: in case of lack of informations, they made up stuff to fill gaps according to their sensitivities.
It's a bit disturbing to realize that probably history is not that "exact science" that scholars assume it is, after all even the most blatant sources must be interpreted and contextualized by a third party, and all the final results would always be "personal" results.

This long introduction served the purpose to create the right mood to talk about this certain guy, Oda Nobumasa.
I stumbled upon this name during one of my usual researches on Nobunaga, and I was surprised to see him listed as Nobunaga's older son, as I never heard of him.
Both curious and perplexed, I tried to find out more, and I saw that Nobumasa was Nobunaga's illegitimate son and, on top of it-- He's an Edo fabrication.

Nobunaga "Il Principe"

Time for some of my random dissertations, today focusing on how similar Nobunaga's policy was compared to the one "idealized" by one of his (almost!) contemporaries from the other side of the world, a certain Niccolò Machiavelli.
The Italy of the Reinassance and the Japan of the Sengoku Era were in similar conditions, even if thing were probably worse in Italy because of the persistent invasions of everyone from the rest of Europe and the Middle East, and the neverending (frequently treacherous) mingling affairs between Signorie, Papacy and foreign nobilities creating even more friction and conflicts.

Oda Nobunaga in Anime pt.II: The Historical Melting Pots

Beside those investigated last time, another disturbing tendency with Nobunaga's contemporary renditions in anime is that of taking a bunch of historical characters from various eras and places and mix them together in some heroic (?) situation of sort.

One of the first series to pop-up styled after this tendency and featuring Nobunaga as the main character is "Nobunagun".
This series was first released as a manga in 2011 by the author Masato Hisa and reduced into a 13 episodes-long anime series on January 2014.
The first proper comparison that popped into my mind was with the manga series "Hagane" by Masaomi Kanzaki dated 1998, which main difference with "Nobunagan" was that the "protagonist" hosted the genes of Miyamoto Musashi rather than the genes of Oda Nobunaga.
In this anime, Shio Ogura is your spacey military otaku girl, who lives her passion with a shy and reserved character, sure that people may make fun of her because of her strange tastes.
Things change for ever when Shio is forced to join the mysterious DOGOO organization, that fights evil aliens for the sake of humankind, because of her peculiar genes, coming staight from the Incident of Honnoji.
So, Nobunaga-sama comes to give strenght and tactical smartness to the girl by temporary possessing her body and showing his strategical genius.
Besides Nobunaga, the other main characters host the genes of Jack the Ripper, Gandhi, Newton, Geronimo, Gaudi, Galileo, the photo-reporter Capa, the criminalist Vidocq and the surgeon Hunter. In my opinion DOGOO had to do a better job with its DNA selection in case of alien invasion! I mean-- Robert Capa?!
The character of Shio was cute at the beginning, expecially because of the fun military passion, then the random sexual innuendos she's the victim of and her really stupid crush on Jack the Ripper left this watcher with a very huge WHY?! on her lips.
I was hoping for some interesting development and well, it just ends with Jack reciprocating his feelings for Nobunaga-chan. --Sorry if I find the mental image a bit disturbing XD

During the same exact period we were presented another anime of doubtful taste, "Nobunaga The Fool".
This was another intriguing project, born as a live stage exhibition in 2013 and later developed into an anime to air on January 2014.
The trailer of the anime looked quite promising, a mecha series set in a Sengoku look-alike mysterious planet and a struggle for power with pretty characters-- I was kinda perplexed by the size of the boobs of Jeanne d'Arc, but I wanted to give this series a chance.
And of course it was a waste of time.
If the superficiality of the characters' treatment in "Nobunagun" was almost its redeeming quality, here the scriptwriters of "The Fool" did their best to characterize the "Western Invasors" as evil, useless, treacherous and overall perverted-- Of course the only reason for the Westerners to be attracted by the Eastern Planet was to steal all its energy and resources, turning the planet into crap.
I still can't believe what happened to guys like Cesare Borgia, Nicolò Machiavelli and Charlemagne in this freaking anime.
The only Western characters who were treated with some mercy where only two: Leonardo Da Vinci, because he followed his wish to visit Jap-AEHM, the Eastern Planet to look for enlightment, and Julius Caesar, because he had the "good taste" to fall in love with a proper Japanese chick, the meek and charming Ichi-hime, Nobunaga's little sister.
The portrayal of Nobunaga had its interesting bits and revelations during the episodes, like how his acting as a fool hid the inner pain and troubles that he wasn't supposed to show, but on the contrary, to use as fuel for his ambition "whatever may happen", I mean, stuff that made one hope for some badass resolution, but no, the conclusion of the anime was exactly as pointless as I was afraid, and in the end Pandor-AEHM, Jeanne's boobs were almost the only redeeming feature of the series.

I'll close this sad list with the only "jewel" of this peculiar genre, the fun "Drifters" by Kouta Hirano, author of the famous "Hellsing".
This manga started its serialization in 2009, and on 2013, bundled with the OVA of the last DVD of "Hellsing Ultimate", was presented a short animation video dedicated to this series, more an omake to the fans of Hirano rather than an actual trailer for an OVA in the making:
Here instead of people with random genes or incarnations of the historical figures, we have the actual historical figures who are transported into a fantasy world, where they find themselves involved in the troubles of the locals, led by mere survival insticts.
The forces on the battlefield are separated into two factions: "The Drifters", those whose deaths were mysterious and left unproven, part of which Nobunaga is, and "The Ends", those who met a terrible death by the hands of others, making them grew spiteful of humankind.
Nobunaga is portrayed as a man in his fifties, being "transported" in the new world right after the Incident of Honnoji: he has a temper and it's a really fun and enjoyable portrait.
I found it interesting how Nobunaga's behaviour is centered around his feelings as a "father", that are the reasons why he takes under his protective wig the yound and wild Shimazu Toyohisa, the protagonist of the series.
The manga of Hirano is quite outrageous and disturbing in many parts, but it's that kind of narration and style that made him popular and entertaining as an author.

This genre start from another curiosity of people: what would happen if important historical characters from various places and historical periods would get to meet? Well, the answer is quite obvious: a war.

Oda Nobunaga in Anime pt.I: Time Travellers and Genderswitch

It's a bit weird for me, a die-hard otaku to talk about Nobunaga in popular culture without mentioning the anime and manga about him.
Truth is, I rarely get interested by his anime renditions.
For the sake of completion, though, I decided to include some short reviews on the portraits of Nobunaga from variour recent anime that featured him in a more or less licit way.

Since I noticed a series of "macro genres" for these series, I decided to review all of them together, pointing out differences, strong points and flaws of each series in a concise yet accurate way.
This first post is dedicated to the macro genres of "Time Travellers" and "Genderswitch", as the two themes are usually presented intertwined, and most importantly I don't want to talk too much about them, as two separate posts would be too work, mm'kay?

Ok then, let's try to follow some kind of chronological order, and let's start with the Genderswitch series, or those series where Nobunaga is portrayed as a woman.
Obviously aimed to a male audience and relished with all kind of sexual innuendos and fanservices, the plots of these anime and their general value is blatantly low, but some traits can be quite entertaining.
First on this list is the series "Sengoku Otome: Momoiro Paradox" (released in the USA as "Battle Girls").
It started its airing on April 2011 as an anime, but its "origin" is that of the pachinko game "Sengoku Otome" of 2009, followed by a manga version ("Sengoku Otome: Hyakka Ryōran") on the same year.
This series feature both generes, as the protagonist, the modern-day student Hide Yoshino, gloriously nicknamed "Hideyoshi", found herself transported in the Japan of Sengoku era, where she got to meet Nobunaga, in a female version, with her crew.


The Nobunaga of this universe is an authoritative, strong woman that gives off a wild vibe.
She's in a rush to gather from rival (female) daimyo pieces of a legendary armor that would grant her the absolute power on the country. In the end Nobunaga would learn that there's more to ruling than authority and violence, and nothing can be done without the support of her loved ones and the people. I must say that despite the simplicistic portrayal, I got to enjoy this version of Nobunaga and this series.
Besides Nobunaga's huge boobs, my favourite feature about this series was the yuri vibe: the only male character is a dog, that acts like a mascotte, and the relationships are all woman-on-woman, which is a nice twist, as these kind of productions usually offer a harem storyline.
It's still an ecchi series destined to men, though, so don't expect any deep character development or analysis, also if some bits are really surprising and intriguing (Mitsuhide, who has a huge crush on Nobunaga, decided to betray her out of jealousy for Hideyoshi, who easily turned into one of Nobunaga's favourite vassals despite her clumsiness).

Exactly the next year, on April 2012, we got another Sengoku anime series following the same recipe, "Sengoku Collection".
This was based on a social card videogame of 2010, focusing on collecting the cards portraying the Sengoku daimyo in their very moe version.
The anime adaptation followed the same pattern: but here is the daimyo themselves who have to collect each other's "treasures" so to manage to get back in their time.
PLOT TWIST! Here in fact, is the Sengoku girls who are scattered around modern-day Japan, and they have to find a way to survive the unknown era besides trying to get back in their age.


The Nobunaga of this series is a pain in the ass.
Characterized as your standard tsundere loli, she's immediately linked to your useless protagonist guy, doomed to become her love interest.
I couldn't watch this series in its entirety, so my review may be lacking but-- NO, just NO.

Despite my disgust, anime producers didn't give up on the idea, so on the July of the same year, "Oda Nobuna no Yabou" was aired on the Japanese TV.
This time the original source for this anime is a blatantly ecchi light novel nonetheless. Originally published on the magazine GA Bunko on 2009, it was followed by a manga adaptation on magazine Comp Ace, a monthly release focusing on bishojo games and relative manga adaptations.
The story is an obvious tribute to the videogame "Nobunaga no Yabou" (the strategy game "Nobunaga's Ambition"). The protagonist of this story, Sagara Yoshiharu, in fact, is a huge fan and an expert of the videogame.
When he found himself in the Sengoku era and he's forced to take the place of Hideyoshi, who died to protect him, his knowledge of the videogame would prove useful to protect his new lord, the pretty yet ambitious Oda Nobuna, from her fated destiny.


This is another harem story, with Sagara being the love interest of Nobuna, but still managing to flirt and seduce all the other female characters featured in the series, faithful to the fame of Hideyoshi as a playboy.
This is another series that I dropped almost instantly because I can't really stand that harem crap anymore, but I must admit that it offered an intriguing plot and an enjoyable portrait of Nobunaga, despite the obvious limits of such a rendition.
In the end Nobuna is nothing but a cute girl who longs for love and peace, but is constricted by her clan's needs and a sense of justice that forces her to pursue war as an attempt to reach for peace to cover a role that doesn't really suit her... The general impression was quite loathful due to the overbearing ecchi crap anyway.

Now we have to make a semantic jump and say goodbye to the series featuring the genderswitch element to focus on the genuine stories focusing on the Time Travel theme.
I have to make an exception and talk about "Nobunaga no Chef", a manga that started its serialization on March 2011, but was granted of a drama TV rendition instead of an anime version on 2013.
I can't really review this excellent series as at the moment I'm stuck to the first volumes of the manga due to a sinful lack of scanlations (and I'm not very motivated to start watching the TV drama, as I heard of some changes from the original story that I didn't like at all), but a mention is due.
The main theme of this series is cooking and Sengoku cuisine, but there's also the theme of the time traveller, as the protagonist, Ken, is a chef from the modern age, who's also affected by amnesia, just to make things more interesting.
The idea of investigating through the Sengoku era "through its stomach" is a bit forced indeed, but still original and fun.
The Nobunaga of this series is quite decent and accurate, definitely a proper rendition of our Demon Lord, and despite the peculiarity of the plot one can't really negate its historical accuracy and value.
We're familiar to the idea of tea ceremony as a diplomatic mean, it's not so weird to assume that food had pretty much a similar mean at the time (and in modern ages too!).

Next is one of the most recent productions on the theme, "Nobunaga Concerto".
Based on a manga that started its serialization in 2009, the anime was recently aired on the summer of the current year. The series was then converted to the TV drama format on the autumn of this same year again, making one assume that it was quite well-received by the audience.
This time the protagonist, clueless student Saburo, is not just sent to the Sengoku Era, but he's also forced to take the place of the real Nobunaga, a weak-willed, sensitive and cultured daimyo who can't deal with the duties of his clan, and shoved your typical good-for-nothing modern boy in his place.


As the portrayal of Nobunaga as a random idiot can be a bit unnerving, sure there are some intriguing and original bits that make this series quite enjoyable: the mention of the "mens of the field" and their role in the Battle of Okehazama, a peaceful portrait of Nouhime (completely changed in the drama version) and the idea of the "original" Nobunaga getting back in the picture as Akechi Mitsuhide, to aid the new Nobunaga and support his vision of the world.
I found quite fun the fact that Saburo knows nothing of Japanese history, his least favourite subject at school-- So his every action in the Sengoku era is pretty much "genuine" as he doesn't really have any idea of the "details". This series also supports the idea of Hideyoshi as a "villain" entering Nobunaga's service to disrupt his clan (he's a shinobi from Imagawa clan), but developing mixed feelings about him as the story progresses...

Another variation on the theme that is probably worth a mention is a manga spin-off of the above mentioned "Nobunaga no Yabou" videogame, "Nobunaga no Yabou ～Rin-ne～".
Sponsored and supervised by KOEI, it started its serialization in 2013, and is currently available in English for free on the website of Manga Samurai Style.
In this version, Nobunaga himself is the time traveller, and he's given the chance to face his life all over again after the facts of Honnoji in an attempt to "fix things".
Besides the wonderful artworks, I found the idea quite intriguing, as it's a sharp reference to the very role of the videogamer: as the player is given another (and another, another--) chance in the game to conquer Japan, the same goes for Nobunaga.
It's interesting to note that here Nobunaga is aware of "how things went", so he tried his best to fix things, trying to take different "routes" to avoid the tragedies that pinpointed his life, but ending up with facing new kind of troubles... Just as a modern gamer, rather than a warlord.

As a Nobunaga fan and a shrewd anime consumer, this interpretation of Nobunaga, expecially the insistence of the time travel factor, the idea that Nobunaga needed "a help" of some kind from the people of modern times, leaves me a bit wonderous.
It makes me wonder about the modern Japaneses, rather than the old ones.
Truth is, modern people still make a point of taking inspiration from "the old sources" as a genuine and wise treasure of sort to grow up culturally and intellectually, think of how seriously stuff like "The Art of War" of Sun Zu or "The Book of Five Rings" of Musashi are taken, yet we still have the arrogance to assume that people from the old times could learn something "from us", who are pretty much their degeneration.
I wouldn't say that I'm against progress, I'm just implying that I find quite improbable that Nobunaga could get any help from any of us, as the exact opposite is quite obvious too.
Thinking of how things are going in "Rinne"-- I'd say that just a totally brand new level of trouble would arise.
--So, that's the reason behind the genderswitch, maybe? Is it a way "to estrange" themselves from the "real deal", and turn it into a mere matter of a "damsel in distress"..? If possible, that's even more cowardly.

Nobunaga and Religion: a few considerations

When the issue of religion is contemplated in Nobunaga's life, people tend to dismiss the whole thing claiming that he was an atheist, or, even better, they quote the whole deal with the self-deification at Azuchi, turning him into a heretical megalomaniac.
The words of Luis Frois on the issues and Nobunaga's constant (and brutal) persecution of Buddhist confederates are usually reported ss evidences of such a theory.

In a correspondence with a fellow missionary dated 1569, Frois wrote that "he openly declares that there is no creator of the universe, no immortality of the soul, no life after death", speaking about Nobunaga's beliefs, portraying him as a lost cause for what concerned Catholicism.
The reports of Frois sure gave us an impression, but we must not forget that Nobunaga was not a Westerner, so trying to define his spiritual disposition from a Catholic point of view may be quite tricky.

Of course I'm not stating that Nobunaga was as a fervently religious person as Uesugi Kenshin or Takeda Shingen were (both of them received monastic education), but that we can't really describe him as an "atheist" (or even as a "satanist", as popular culture taught us) according to our modern standard, despite his verified pragmatism and unorthodox solutions when it came to del with the Ikko Ikki & Co.

First of all, we don't have to identify the concept "religion" as a mere matter of "believing in supernatural entities".
Religion is, firstly and foremost, a "cultural matter".
Giving a trascendental or mystic outline to the identity of a community is the first step of human civilization, it's how people recognize themself as part of a "society".
The "rules" according to which this society develops derive from some kind of "mythology" that legitimizes its identity, and sometimes superiority, among "others".
It's the same for every monotheistic religion, but this basical anthropologioc principle applies to ancient Greeks, Egyptians and of course even to Shintoism, the indigeous religion of Japan.

During Nobunaga's time, the religious compartment was shared between Shintoism and Buddhism.
As Shintoism was the religion more popular with the low classes and rural society, because of its emphasis on family, ancestors and farming, Buddhism was the religion of the warrior class; it was common to have the kids of a samurai to study in a Buddhist temple so to apprehend what the warlord of the time considered as "ethic": value the loyalty to superiors, need for decorum and feelings of superiority for those who didn't belong to the samurai class.

Even Nobunaga received such an education. It's said that he studied in a temple by Kiyosu castle, and the influence of Takugen Shuon, a bonze of the Rinzai sect, over Nobunaga and the Oda family is well-known and documented.
It's him who suggested the name "Nobunaga" for the boy's genpuku to Nobuhide, Nobunaga's motto "Tenka Fubu" and, according to certain sources, even "Gifu" when it came to rename Inabayama castle.
Other Zen "teachers" whose friendship Nobunaga could boast were Nange Genkō, a patron of arts and fine culture, and Sakugen Shuryo, famous for his diplomatic relationships and missions in China, but they'll get later in the picture.

Sure, we don't know who took care of Nobunaga's education at the time, but we know that he spent the most of time having fun with his band of kabukimono rather than studying Confucianism, subject that he was quite acknowledged about, anyway.
The idea is that of a "country boy", a description that accompanied Nobunaga during most of his youth and even during his first clashes with powerful daimyo.
Sure his behavious do suggest a lack of higher education, but in my opinion the source of this "wildness" is to find in Shinto.

As I said previously, Shinto religion covered those sides of a Japanese daily life that dealt with with traditional, "regional" issues.
Praying for protection against famine, illness and the like was supposed to be a Shinto duty because of the "local character" of such issues.

Nobunaga had a strict connection with Shintoism through his whole life.

In his youth he was known for being a faithful attendee of the Tennou Matsuri of Tsushima shrine (津島神社).
The festival honors Gozutennō, invoked against pestilences during summer, but it mostly focuses on celebrating the Tennō river, which course is animated by the floating of suggestive makiwara-bune, rappresenting the five villages that once formed Tsushima.
Of course I'm sure that his "devotion" here was mostly due to the appeal of the joyous festival more than genuine religious fervor, but you can say that this experience formed the conscience of Nobunaga, who saw religion as a way to give the sense of "kinship" through culture rather than politics.

Speaking of Gozutenno, it's worth mentioning the attendance of Nobunaga and his men to the Gion Matsuri in 1578.
Gion and Tsushima are connected as both festivals share the same origin of protection against pestilences, and in both festivals the support of Susanoo is invoked to keep in place a rampaging Gozutenno.
During the Gion Matsuri, Nobunaga enjoyed the view of the yamaboko parade, but also gave a splendid example of modern "public order" management, so that everyone could enjoy the festival without its rituals being interrupted or disturbed.

The other important Shinto temple strictly connected to Nobunaga's name is the Atsuta shrine (熱田神宮).
This famous shrine was originally built to host the Kusanagi sword, one of the three Imperial treasures, but it's now also the house of the Five Great Gods of Atsuta, or those deities connected with the legendary sword and the foundation of the shrine: Amaterasu, Susanoō, Yamato Takeru, Miyasuhime and Inadane.
Nobunaga came here to pray for victory on the way to the battle of Okehazama in 1560, and returned once his wish was granted to build a roofed wall hardened by mud, grease and lime, the "Nobunaga Wall" (信長塀), as a token of his gratitude.

Many legends are connected with Nobunaga's visits to Atsuta Shrine.
One refers to the Makezu no Tsuba and tries to explain the use of the eiraku coins, bringing in an exquisitely Buddhist explanation, another, more suggestive and tied to Shinto symbology, talks about two white egrets that took flight from the temple once Nobunaga and his army were done with the rituals, only to rest by the camp of Imagawa's forces, showing Nobunaga's army where the enemy was posted.
Like many other animals, egrets are considered messengers of kami, and for this reason also frequently used as an "offer" to a temple.
Even if a mere legend, the story of the egrets is a perfect example of cultural intermission on a political matter, and how a "religious" fact legitimized an historical fact.

Another Shinto shrine is mentioned when it comes to Okehazama, at least on Nagoya's touristic guides, the Hioki shrine (日置神社).
It's said that Nobunaga made a stop to pray here too, and after his victory he donated a thousand pine branches to the shrine.
It's worth noting that the deity enshrined here is Futodama, the kami to whom the Inbe clan traced its descent.

Since we mentioned the Inbe Clan we are now forced to step back and return to Nobunaga's ancestors, who claimed Tsurugi shrine(劔神社), another Shinto shrine, as their "home".
It's said that Nobunaga kept on referring to Tsurugi shrine as the shrine of his ancestors too, but unfortunately we have no mentions of a visit there, obviously because the shrine was part of enemy terrority back then.
The shrine is dedicated to Susanoo.

Browsing through the pages of the Shinchoukoki, we can find many other examples of the same kind.
They are important statements that, if Nobunaga wasn't a follower of any religion, he did understand its importance in the social structure, identity and tradition of "his people".

It's reported that in 1574 Nobunaga happened to be in Kyoto during the Kamo Matsuri at Kamo Shrine (賀茂神社).
This Shinto sanctuary complex houses one of the most important festivals of Kyoto, that in Nobunaga's times was referred as "Kamo Matsuri", but that now is famous as the "Aoi Matsuri": originally a festival to grant a bountiful harvest, it was celebrated through ritual horses races and equestrian archery.
The priests asked him if he could provide some horses for the races: Nobunaga granted them two of his favourite war horses that he personally rode in battle, and another eighteen, all of them "outfitted splendidly", so that the festival left a deep impression on the visitors.

In 1575 he happened again around the Atsuta grounds while camping there during the campaign against Takeda.
He was observing the Hakkengu (八剣宮) and noticed that it was in pitiful conditions: he promptly ordered Okabe Mataemon to take care of its reconstruction.

It wouldn't be the last time that Nobunaga cared to support and fix famous shrines of Shinto faith.

In 1579 it came to Nobunaga's attention how the wooden gutters of the Iwashimizu Hachiman Shrine (石清水八幡宮) rot, ruining the whole "character" of the shrine.
He summoned his deputies of the province, and had them work on a project using bronze gutters, so that the job could last "for ages".
The work proved quite expensive and time consuming, but once it was done, a groundbreaking ceremony was held after receiving the blessing of the Emperor, and Nobunaga presented the temple a refined censer.
It's interesting to note that another wall, exactly like the one at Atsuta Shrine, was built here by Nobunaga.

In 1582, a request from Uwabe Sadanaga, one of Nobunaga's retainer, was brought to his attention by Hori Hidemasa: "the custom of rebuilding the Grand Shrines of Ise (伊勢神宮) every twenty years had been in decline for three centuries and was no longer being carried out".
I don't think that I need to tell you about the Ise Shrine. And Nobunaga either, needed to be asked twice: but this time, aware of the expenses after the deal with Hachiman Shrine, he asked Nobutada to contribute with Gifu's funds so to not "impose hardships on the populace".

I talked about Shinto, and now I'll spend a few words on Buddhism too, to close the circle.

I already mentioned his Buddhist intimate friends and "teachers" and even Frois reported that Nobunaga described himself as a follower of the Hokke sect of Buddhism, even if it's usually considered as a misunderstanding on Frois' account.
Truth is that the Buddhist temples where he usually lodged at during his trips to Kyoto belonged to the Hokke sect: I'm talking about the Myokakuji (妙覚寺) and the Honnoji (本能寺), the temple that in 1570 he claimed as his ryoshuku, or "private quarters".
It's usually assumed that Nobunaga favoured those places because the quality of the hospitality rather than the religious affiliation, but it's worth mentioning that it may be true also otherwise.
After all, the temples that Nobunaga built for his family and clan were of Buddhist affiliation: the family temple that he built at Azuchi, the Sokenji (総見寺), was a temple of the Rinzai sect of Buddhism, and an image of Kannon was enshrined there; the Sofukuji (崇福寺), the temple that he used when he moved to Gifu, belonged to the Rinzai sect of Buddhism too.
It's worth noting that also the temple that he built in 1553 to honor the memory of his former tutor Hirate Masahide, the Seijouji (政秀寺), was of Rinzai affiliation, while the Banshoji (萬松寺), the family temple built by Nobuhide in 1540, was of Soto sect.

After Nobunaga's death, many temples were dedicated to his memory.
The Sokenji (総見寺) in Nagoya was originally built in Kiyosu, and was dedicated to his father and brother's memory by Nobukatsu after their death at Honnoji. Like its homonimous in Azuchi, the temple belongs to the Rinzai sect of Buddhism.
In 1587, Hideyoshi dedicated the Daiun-in (大雲院) to the memory of Nobutada and Nobunaga: "Daiunin" is the posthumous Buddhist name of Nobutada.
Another Buddhist temple that hosts a memorial of Nobunaga is the Amidaji (阿弥陀寺), a temple of the Jodo Sect in Kyoto: it's said that the monk Seigyoku, who had deep connections to the Oda family, gathered the remains of Nobunaga, Nobutada and the other men who met their death at Honnoji and buried them in the temple grounds: the ashes have been equally divided through the temples of Amidaji, Honnoji and Kenkun Shrine (建勲神社), which is the most recent temple dedicated to Nobunaga: this Shinto shrine was built in 1870 by one of Nobunaga's descendant, Oda Nobutoshi, with the blessing of Emperor Meiji, and Nobunaga himself is enshrined here.

Long story short, Nobunaga wasn't an iconoclast, an atheist or a rebel like many likes to think to justify this or that "cruelty".
He never denied the importance of religion or vilified its contents: whenever he condamned or executed a religious group or personality, it was simply because "they no longer stressed the moral practices of the nembutsu path", they "disobeyed even the ordinances of their own school" or they "were concerned only with wordly affairs".
To put it in simple words, they were acting like a political force, and not like a religious entity.

PS: Since last time I've been scolded for the lack of bibliographical references, here you go:
"Religion in Japanese History", Kitagawa, Joseph
"Feste Tradizionali in Giappone", Caillet, Laurence (trad. Dentoni, Francesco)
"Oda Nobunaga and the Buddhist institutions", McMullin, Neil Francis, which can be consulted online here.

My First Meeting with Oda Nobunaga

I decided to launch this new tiny blog on mine dedicated to the historical figure of Oda Nobunaga with some original content, in the specific case, telling you about how went my first meeting with this legendary samurai.

Long story short, I have to blame a movie by Oshima Nagisa, based on a comic of Shirato Sanpei, Ninja Bugeicho (it was presented during some North-American festival under the not-so-suggestive title Band of Ninja).
The movies is peculiarly charming: I could talk about an anime, but that's pretty far from an anime, the kind Miyazaki got Westerners used to, and closer to somethings else.
Just like what Shirato drawn was pretty far from manga, and closer to something else.
Sanpei Shirato was a popular gekiga artist, where the word for gekiga was an exact contrary of manga, as it translates as "dramatic drawing".
Following his leftist ideas and the heritage from his father as a kamishibai artist, Shirato offered to the audience of the 50s and the 60s plenty of works where his considerations on the human cruelty, vanity and prevarication are still modern and worth of attention.

So, when watching the movie it's the world of the above mentioned kamishibai that comes to mind: still images that come to life thanks to the recitation of the narrator.
Looking at the original pages of the manga moving on screen is indeed a pleasure for the mind, and I encourage anyone to give a peek to this eccentric work, assuming that you have enough guts to face some serious violence!

Anyway, after I watched this movie I wasn't really impressed by Nobunaga. He was a random antagonistic character, and he wasn't enough evil to be recognized as an actual villain, go figure!
Anyway, since I promised a friend who was managing a wonderful website about Shirato Sanpei to help with the biographies of the historical characters appearing in this series, I started to investigate about Akechi Mitsuhide, Yagyû Muneyoshi, Kennyo and, of course, Oda Nobunaga.

I was immediately charmed by his biography, expecially by the years of his youth and how they contrasted with what he was going to be in the future.
The image of this rowdy, unruly boy who couldn't care less about etiquete, cliques and conventions grew up on me easily, since it's such a rare figure to find in Japanese history, expecially in such history, talking about samurai and the like.
The vapid warlord of the movie was easily overruled, and after a read on Wikipedia and a few researches on Google, I could call myself a Nobunaga fan.

This bit is another discovery itself.
It's interesting and fullfilling to see how knowledge can easily change the points of view of an individua, making them aware of the facts so to manage to develop a personal opinion.
After this realization, I decided that I'd investigate Nobunaga's life further, if not to cover every detail of his life, at least to make my image of him even clearer.