Battle of Oshikibata

What Happened

On 4 July 1554, Mōri Motonari (毛利元就, もうり もとなり) met the army of Miyagawa Fusanaga (宮川房長, みやがわ ふさなが) in Saeki district in Aki Province, in the west of what is now Hiroshima Prefecture. The Mōri force destroyed the Miyagawa army, and Miyagawa Fusanaga was killed in the fighting. The battle is counted as the opening move of the campaign that ended with the Battle of Miyajima.

The engagement took place at Oshikibata, a site in the Saeki district of Aki Province. The date falls in the twenty-third year of the Tenbun era (天文, てんぶん), a reign-name period running during the Muromachi period (1336–1573).

Background

The battle belongs to the Sengoku period (戦国時代, せんごくじだい), the century of civil war in which provincial warlords dismantled the authority of the Ashikaga shoguns and fought each other for land. In the west, the dominant power was the Ōuchi clan of Yamaguchi, whose lord Ōuchi Yoshitaka (大内義隆, おおうち よしたか) had built a courtly, wealthy domain on trade with the Asian mainland.

In 1551, Ōuchi Yoshitaka's own retainer Sue Harukata (陶晴賢, すえ はるかた) turned on him in a coup and forced him to take his own life. Sue then ruled through a puppet lord rather than taking the Ōuchi name for himself. Mōri Motonari, a lesser lord who had served the Ōuchi, refused to accept the coup and set out to avenge his murdered overlord.

The immediate precursor to Oshikibata is recorded as 防芸引分 (ぼうげいひきわけ), a division between the provinces of Bō and Gei — the split by which the Mōri and their opponents sorted out control of the borderlands between Aki and Suō. By the summer of 1554 Mōri Motonari was ready to strike into Aki Province, and Miyagawa Fusanaga, a Sue commander, moved to stop him.

Why It Mattered

Oshikibata was a preliminary round to the Battle of Miyajima, which followed it. It removed a Sue-aligned force from the field in Aki Province and cleared the ground for the decisive confrontation with Sue Harukata himself.

That confrontation came at Miyajima, and it broke Sue Harukata's power for good. With Sue gone, the Mōri clan took over the whole of the Ōuchi lands and replaced the Ōuchi as one of the most powerful families in the country. The road from a provincial stronghold in Aki to mastery of western Japan began with the destruction of Miyagawa Fusanaga's army on 4 July 1554.

The Name in Japanese

The Japanese name is 折敷畑の戦い, read おしきばたのたたかい (Oshikibata no tatakai). The romaji spelling is Oshikibata no tatakai.

Broken down character by character:

• 折 — read here as お (o). The kanji means "to fold" or "to bend". It is the first element of the place name Oshikibata.
• 敷 — read here as しき (shiki). The kanji means "to spread out" or "to lay down". Together with 折 it forms 折敷 (おしき, oshiki), a word for a flat, folded-rim tray or mat — a thin square board with turned-up edges used to serve food or to set things on.
• 畑 — read here as はた (hata), which in this compound voices to ばた (bata). The kanji means "field" or "dry field", as opposed to a flooded rice paddy. So 折敷畑 (おしきばた, Oshikibata) is literally "tray field" — a dry field named for its shape or for a tray-like flatness.
• の — the possessive particle, written in kana. It links the place name to the noun that follows, so 折敷畑の means "of Oshikibata".
• 戦 — read here as たたか (tataka). The kanji means "war", "battle" or "to fight". It is the stem of the verb 戦う (たたかう, tatakau), "to fight".
• い — kana, completing the noun 戦い (たたかい, tatakai), "a battle" or "a fight".

So the whole name means "the Battle of Oshikibata". Note that 畑 is a distinctly Japanese character — a kokuji (国字, こくじ), a kanji coined in Japan rather than borrowed from Chinese — which is why it carries only a native Japanese reading here and no Chinese-derived one.

Key Figures

Mōri Motonari (毛利元就, もうり もとなり) commanded the Mōri army at Oshikibata. He was the lord of Aki Province who took up the cause of avenging Ōuchi Yoshitaka after Sue Harukata's coup, and who went on from this victory to break Sue's power and inherit the Ōuchi domains.

Miyagawa Fusanaga (宮川房長, みやがわ ふさなが) commanded the opposing force at Oshikibata. He was killed in the battle on 4 July 1554.

Sue Harukata (陶晴賢, すえ はるかた) does not appear at Oshikibata in person, but the battle was fought against his cause. He had forced Ōuchi Yoshitaka to his death in 1551 and ruled the Ōuchi lands through a figurehead; the Mōri campaign that began at Oshikibata was aimed at him, and ended at Miyajima.

Ōuchi Yoshitaka (大内義隆, おおうち よしたか) was the Ōuchi lord overthrown and killed in Sue Harukata's coup. Mōri Motonari's stated purpose in taking the field was to avenge him.