Battle of Gifu Castle

What Happened

On 30 September 1600, the castle town of Gifu in Mino Province — today's Gifu Prefecture — became the site of a short, decisive siege. The castle's defender was Oda Hidenobu, grandson of the unifier Oda Nobunaga, who had thrown his lot in with the western coalition led by Ishida Mitsunari. Against him came a force of eastern armies loyal to Tokugawa Ieyasu, commanded by Fukushima Masanori and joined by Ikeda Terumasa and Ikeda Sen.

The assault was pressed hard and the castle fell. Gifu Castle was destroyed in the fighting, leaving the position unusable for the western cause. The engagement lasted only a matter of days, but it removed a major stronghold from the map at the opening of the decisive campaign of the Sengoku period.

Background

By 1600 Japan had been at war, on and off, for more than a century. The Sengoku period — 戦国時代, sengoku jidai, the "Warring States period" — was an age in which regional warlords fought each other for land and supremacy. Oda Nobunaga had come close to unifying the country before his death in 1582, and Toyotomi Hideyoshi had completed the task by the 1590s. When Hideyoshi died in 1598, the settlement he left behind began to come apart.

Two blocs formed. In the west, Ishida Mitsunari gathered a coalition of daimyō — 大名, lords who governed territories and commanded their own armies — who opposed Tokugawa Ieyasu. In the east, Ieyasu assembled the lords who backed him. Gifu Castle sat on Mount Kinka, a steep, easily defended height commanding the roads of Mino Province, and it belonged to Oda Hidenobu, who declared for the west.

Ieyasu's commanders moved to eliminate the castle before the two main armies could meet. Fukushima Masanori led the attack, with Ikeda Terumasa and Ikeda Sen among the eastern forces committed to the operation. The date fell in the fifth year of the Keichō era — 慶長, Keichō, the era name in use from 1596 to 1615 — within the Azuchi–Momoyama period that ran from 1573 to 1603.

Why It mattered

Gifu Castle was a gate. Whoever held it controlled the approach routes through Mino Province, and the western coalition had counted on it to slow or split the eastern advance. Its destruction in a single action opened the road and let the eastern armies move west without a major siege behind them.

The battle is remembered chiefly as the prelude to Sekigahara. The following month, on 21 October 1600, the two coalitions met in open battle in Mino Province, and Ieyasu's victory there settled the contest for national power. The speed with which Gifu fell — and the fact that Oda Hidenobu, a grandson of Nobunaga, lost it — signalled how quickly the old loyalties of the unification wars had been overtaken by the new alignment between east and west.

The Name in Japanese

The Japanese name is 岐阜城の戦い.

• Kana reading: ぎふじょうのたたかい
• Romaji: Gifu-jō no Tatakai

Broken down character by character:

• 岐 — read gi here. It is the first character of the place name Gifu. On its own the character carries the sense of a fork or branching path, and it appears in very few common words outside place names.
• 阜 — read fu here. It means a mound, hill or raised ground, which is why it pairs naturally with the terrain of a castle town. Like 岐, it is rare in everyday vocabulary and survives mainly in the name Gifu.
• 城 — read jō here. It means castle. This is a very common character in Japanese history and appears in the names of hundreds of fortifications, from 大坂城 (Ōsaka-jō) to 姫路城 (Himeji-jō).
• の — read no. A possessive particle, written in hiragana rather than kanji. It links the two halves of the name, so 岐阜城の戦い means "the battle of Gifu Castle".
• 戦 — read tata in this word, as the first element of the verb-derived noun 戦い. The character means war, battle or fight. Its other common reading is sen, as in 戦国 (sengoku, warring states).
• い — read i. A hiragana ending that turns the verb 戦う (tatakau, to fight) into the noun 戦い (tatakai, a battle or fight).

A note on the suffix: 城 alone is read shiro when it stands by itself, meaning "castle". When it is attached to a place name it shifts to jō, so 岐阜 + 城 becomes 岐阜城, Gifu-jō. The same pattern gives 岐阜城の戦い its full reading, Gifu-jō no Tatakai.

Key Figures

Oda Hidenobu — 織田秀信. Grandson of Oda Nobunaga and lord of Gifu Castle. He sided with Ishida Mitsunari's western forces and defended the castle on 30 September 1600. Its loss ended his hold on the position.

Fukushima Masanori — 福島正則. Commander of the eastern assault on Gifu Castle, loyal to Tokugawa Ieyasu.

Ikeda Terumasa — 池田照政. Eastern commander who took part in the operation against Gifu Castle.

Ikeda Sen — 池田せん. Eastern commander named among the forces arrayed against Oda Hidenobu at Gifu Castle.

Ishida Mitsunari — 石田三成. Leader of the western coalition to which Oda Hidenobu and Gifu Castle were committed. His cause would be decided at Sekigahara the following month.

Tokugawa Ieyasu — 徳川家康. Head of the eastern coalition, to whom the attackers at Gifu Castle were loyal.