Battle of Kawanakajima

What Happened

On 18 October 1561, the fourth and largest of the Battles of Kawanakajima was fought on the plain of Kawanakajima, in northern Shinano Province — the area of the present-day city of Nagano. The two armies belonged to Takeda Shingen, lord of Kai Province, and Uesugi Kenshin, lord of Echigo Province. The fighting was the bloodiest of the five battles the two men fought over the same ground, and it ended without a decisive result.

The encounter is famous for a manoeuvre known as "woodpecker" tactics (啄木鳥の戦法, kitsutsuki no senpō). Shingen divided his force, sending a detachment to climb Mount Saijo and strike Kenshin's camp from the rear while his main body held position. Kenshin learned of the plan and moved first, attacking Shingen's main camp directly in the early morning. Shingen's army was driven back, and his younger brother Takeda Nobushige was killed in the fighting. When the detached force returned from the mountain, it fell on Kenshin's exhausted troops, and the Uesugi army withdrew across the Chikuma River.

Both sides claimed the victory. Neither Shingen nor Kenshin gained control of the Kawanakajima plain, and the fifth battle, at Shiozaki in 1564, also settled nothing.

Background

The five Battles of Kawanakajima ran from 1553 to 1564, fought between Takeda Shingen of Kai and Uesugi Kenshin of Echigo. The plain they contested lies between the Sai River and the Chikuma River in northern Shinano Province, in what is now Nagano.

The dispute began when Shingen conquered Shinano and expelled two local lords, Ogasawara Nagatoki and Murakami Yoshikiyo. Both men turned to Kenshin for help, which drew Echigo into a long contest with Kai over the province between them. Five major battles followed: Fuse in 1553, Saigawa in 1555, Uenohara in 1557, Hachimanbara in 1561, and Shiozaki in 1564. The 1561 battle is the one usually meant by the plain name "Battle of Kawanakajima", and it is the fourth in the sequence, following Uenohara.

The battle took place in the fourth year of the Eiroku era (永禄, えいろく), a nengō (年号, ねんごう) — an era name used to count years — within the Muromachi period, which ran from 1336 to 1573. The wider setting is the Sengoku period, the "Warring States" age of near-constant conflict among regional lords.

Why It Mattered

Militarily, the fourth battle changed little. Shingen kept his hold on Shinano; Kenshin kept Echigo; the plain of Kawanakajima stayed contested. The cost, however, was severe. The death of Takeda Nobushige, Shingen's brother and one of his most trusted commanders, removed a senior figure from the Takeda leadership, and both armies suffered heavy losses among their samurai.

The greater importance of the battle is cultural. The Kawanakajima campaigns became one of the most cherished tales in Japanese military history, treated as the epitome of Japanese chivalry and romance. The two commanders — a disciplined strategist facing a famously direct and fearless opponent — gave later writers a ready-made drama of worthy rivals. The story was retold in epic literature, in paintings and woodblock prints, and eventually in film.

For the language, the battle left a lasting phrase. The "woodpecker" tactics that Shingen attempted are still cited as a textbook example of a flanking manoeuvre, and the names Takeda Shingen and Uesugi Kenshin remain shorthand in Japanese for the ideal warrior and the ideal rival.

The Name in Japanese

The Japanese name is 第四次川中島の戦い, read だいよじ かわなかじまのたたかい (daiyoji Kawanakajima no tatakai). In romaji the full form is Daiyoji Kawanakajima no tatakai; the battle is also commonly called simply 川中島の戦い, Kawanakajima no tatakai.

Broken down character by character:

• 第 (だい, dai) — a prefix meaning "number" in an ordered series, as in "the fourth".
• 四 (よ, yo) — "four". Together, 第四 (だいよ, daiyo) means "the fourth".
• 次 (じ, ji) — "next" or "order"; 第四次 (だいよじ, daiyoji) is the standard way of writing "the fourth time" or "the fourth (battle)".
• 川 (かわ, kawa) — "river".
• 中 (なか, naka) — "middle" or "inside".
• 島 (じま, jima) — "island". 川中島 (かわなかじま, Kawanakajima) therefore means "island in the middle of the river" — a name for land lying between two rivers, which is exactly the situation of the plain between the Sai and the Chikuma.
• の (no) — the possessive particle linking the place name to the noun that follows.
• 戦 (たたか, tatakai) — "battle" or "war"; the verb 戦う (たたかう, tatakau) means "to fight".
• い (i) — the okurigana ending that turns 戦 into the noun 戦い (たたかい, tatakai), "a battle".

So the whole name reads literally as "the fourth Kawanakajima battle". Note that 川中島 is a place name, not a description of the battle itself, and that the same three characters are read Kawanakajima rather than with the separate readings kawa, naka, shima.

Key Figures

Takeda Shingen (武田信玄, たけだ しんげん) — lord of Kai Province and commander of one of the two armies at Kawanakajima. He had taken Shinano and was determined to hold it against Echigo.

Uesugi Kenshin (上杉謙信, うえすぎ けんしん) — lord of Echigo Province. He entered the Shinano conflict on behalf of the lords Shingen had expelled, and faced Shingen across the Kawanakajima plain for more than a decade.

Takeda Nobushige (武田信繁, たけだ のぶしげ) — Shingen's younger brother, killed in the fighting on 18 October 1561.

Ogasawara Nagatoki (小笠原長時, おがさわら ながとき) and Murakami Yoshikiyo (村上義清, むらかみ よしきよ) — the Shinano lords driven out by Shingen's conquest of the province. Their appeal to Kenshin for help brought Echigo into the war and set the conditions for the Kawanakajima campaigns.