Jesuit Luís Fróis on Oda Nobunaga:

Jesuit Luís Fróis on Oda Nobunaga:

>"This King of Owari, who would be around 37 years old, is tall of stature, lean, sparsely bearded, with extremely sonorous voice, given to military exercises, indefatigable, inclined to works of justice and compassion, arrogant, a great lover of honour, very secretive in his decisions, a master of stratagems, hardly or not at all mindful of the reprimands or advice of his subordinates, and is feared and venerated by all to the highest degree. He does not drink wine, is brusque in his manner, looks down upon all the other kings and princes of Japan and speaks to them with disdain as if to his inferiors, is totally obeyed by all as the absolute lord, has good understanding and sharp judgements, despises the gods, the Buddhas, and all other kinds of idolatry and pagan superstition. Nominally, he professes to belong to the Lotus sect, but openly declares that there is no creator of the universe, no immortality of the soul, or life after death. His buildings are very clean and refined, and always in perfect order. He hates delays and circumlocution, and not even a prince appears before him bearing a sword; he always has two thousand pages or mounted guards with him. His father was Lord of Owari Province, but he, through his immense energy, has subjected seventeen or eighteen provinces in the last four years. He conquered the eight [sic] central provinces, including the metropolitan province of Yamashiro, in seven or eight days."

What do you guys think about Nobunaga? He seems to be quite an interesting man, very unlike many lords from his time (at least on his personal beliefs).

Wow he literally is an edgelord like in muh Koei games.

sounds like an assburger

Sounds like a stelar leader and a pragmatic man focused on perfection and having things done properly.

He was brilliant, but he was an absolute madman. He had his son-in-law (who was also the son of a childhood friend of his, the guy who ultimately became Tokugawa Ieyasu) commit suicide over the complaints of his own daughter. He died because he publically sperged out on Mitsuhide for not building a visitation building the way he wanted him to.

Dont forget wearing clothes whose colour combinations were so bad they were considered rude.

This Nobunaga was the real life Toranaga

Also walking all disheveled into his dad's funeral and throwing sand (or salt, I may misremember) onto his grave.

Is there a good book or documentary or film on him?

Even a manga or anime...

>Even a manga or anime...
I hope you like your Japanese Warlords as cute girls user.

there is a lot really japan is obsessed with him, but try hyouge mono.

Source about this trange behaviours? I learned he was considered to be a fool when young. Like this:

>"From the beginning, Oda Nobunaga went against the grain. He was the son of a military governor named Oda Nobuhide and was thus born into a social rank. However, he had a rebellious side and ignored social rules, befriending youths from other social classes, which was frowned upon at that time. He also took a keen interest in firearms, which were new to Japan. Because of these things, he was considered odd among his community."

and

>"Oda Nobunaga was born on June 23, 1534, in the Owari domain, and was given the childhood name of Kippōshi (吉法師?).[3] He was the second son of Oda Nobuhide, a deputy shugo (military governor) with land holdings in Owari Province.[3] He is said to have been born in Nagoya Castle, although this is subject to debate. Through his childhood and early teenage years, he was well known for his bizarre behavior and received the name of Owari no Ōutsuke (尾張の大うつけ?, The Big Fool of Owari). He was known to run around with other youths from the area, without any regard to his own rank in society. With the introduction of firearms into Japan, though, he became known for his fondness of tanegashima firearms."

What more can be said? Also, combine this with the OP when he have actually a quite interesting fellow, very diferent from the period warlords.

My vague memories tell me he was supposed to be Tokugawa, but maybe I'm wrong.

He would've made a Japanese empire a real thing, way before the Meiji Restauration. He hated everyone, but he realised that the west hadsuperior warfare, this was one of the reasons why he let the missionaries in, because guns. He also absolutely hated how the Buddhist sects had political power, but they were kinda dicks about it, hiding behind their temples, so he torched the shit out of them. Also, letting the christfags in, meant attacking the sects on another front. He was a man who valued skill, instead of superstition, or rank in society, see his successor, Hideyoshi.
I'm certain that he would've made an empire that had Korea, and most of South East Asia under his rule. He wouldn't have closed off the country like the Tokugawa. Shame about him being assassinated.

We have no idea what plans Oda had because he was so busy fighting cunts as powerful as he was.

Namely: lords far north and far south.

If Hideyoshi's decisions are anything to go by, he would've succeeded in unifying the country, and he wouldn't have let the power slip from his hand.
We do know that he wanted to establish connections with the westerners though, he wouldn't have closed off the country. Wheter he would've backstabbed them after he got what he wanted, mainly technology and weapons, or become an ally and establish an empire in the region , we will never know. We do know that he hated pretty much everyone.

Oh yea, beacause the invasion of Korea by Hideyoshi went so well :P

Hideyoshis foreign policies is today considered weird in Japanese historiography.

Like, why the fuck did he started threatening China/Korea/The Spics in the Philippines? Not to mention for someone who ostensibly wanted to create HURR JAPANESE EMPIRE, why did he absolutely not give a fuck about the war in Korea? He just popped into Kato Kiyomasa, the CiC of the Korean Invasion every once in a while, said hi-hello-carry-on and promptly fucked off back to governing Japan. Cunt literally had a very strange foreign policy and his war in Korea was almost like a background event for him.

Conspiracy theorists in Japanese history put this down to Toyotomi distracting the Daimyo from focusing on him - he was a commoner turned de-facto Shogun- by launching wars abroad that he did not care about, so long as it kept suspected Daimyos busy.

Keep in mind that while Hideyoshi was talented, he was still basically a regular guy who got to the top. He also invaded Korea while the homefront was still lukewarm, with people just waiting for an excuse. Nobunaga wouldn't have hurried off to invade korea probably, but sadly, we'll never know.
Also, since Nobunaga was from a proper family, he probably would've had heirs, or loyal regents, not a council of 5 guys who all wanted to be the ruler of japan.

Nobunaga was a stellar warlord, general, tactician, strategist, administrator and more. He could be brutal at times and was probably an asshole to have as your boss, but he got things done big time.

One thing that puzzles me I guess is that in Luis Frois' description he mentions Nobunaga always having a large cadre of guards surrounding him, yet at Honnoji it seems like he was undermanned to the point where Mitsuhide had no difficulty toppling him. Did he drop his guard as he got older? If so, I guess that was the one major mistake he made.

I've read that he was merely pretending to be retarded

IIRC, it went way better than it ever should have. On the sea it is well known that Yi Sun Shin absolutely rekt the Japanese "navy," but on land the Japanese forces were incredibly successful. IIRC they won almost every single battle against the Koreans and Chinese and only lost a few. Their armies were a lot more competent and disciplined despite being vastly outnumbered (particularly when the Ming entered the conflict).

With diplomacy, maybe it is possible they could have gotten at least a foothold on the Korean peninsula but various factors such as Hideyoshi's unwillingness to temporize and eventually his demise nixed the opportunity.

Oh don't get me wrong, I also think that Hideyoshi's decisions was kinda retarded. I mean it's probably safe to assume that he knew what was Nobunaga planning, he was one of his most trusted men. He was also kind of an asshole, because he literally went against the rightful heir to Nobunaga. He did get the idea to invade Korea and china from nobunaga though. But he did it in a rush, cause he knew he was dying , and he wanted to do it quickly, but this obviously backfired horribly.
IIRC, the incident at Honnoji was such a clusterfuck and unexpected, records vary. But It wasn't easy, they surrounded the temple, and Nobunaga realized that he's done for, so he killed himself and set fire to the temple. Cool dude desu.

>IIRC they won almost every single battle against the Koreans and Chinese and only lost a few.
Ming cavalry were able to BTFO Japanese in field battles.(Byeokjegwan,Jiksan) They were far more successful in sieges.

>Their armies were a lot more competent and disciplined
Ming varied in quality while Joseon regular forces were absolute shit.

>despite being vastly outnumbered (particularly when the Ming entered the conflict).
38,000~ vs. 137,200

What a madman.